Eight years after convincing American industry to join the race to develop high-definition TV, the federal government is divided over whether to sell the airwaves for this flashy technology or give it away.
Senate Republican leader Bob Dole says that failure to auction the channels would amount to "corporate welfare" and a "give-away" of a scarce public resource.Selling the space could help swell government coffers by as much as $70 billion, he adds.
To the consortium that scored the technological breakthrough, an auction amounts to the government going back on its word in ways that will stall the growth of HDTV.
Dire consequences are predicted - lost jobs, no more free TV and less money for the government in the long run.
And the technology at stake is alluring - sharper pictures, computer data and up to four shows at once on a single channel.
"Some in Congress don't understand and want us to squander the U.S. technological lead," says Jim Carnes, head of the David Sarnoff Research Center, part of the academic-and-industry "Grand Alliance" that brought American HDTV to the commercial threshold.
Adds Robert Bieritz of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers: "There's a great deal of talk about economic insecurity in America and jobs going overseas, but it's time we recognize American workers are big stakeholders in HDTV."
By his count, 25,000 jobs making HDTV sets, parts and software for starters hinge on the United States keeping its edge.
A better plan, says Richard Wiley, who heads the Federal Communications Commission's advisory panel overseeing HDTV, is the one the government charted in the late 1980s and early '90s, when it agreed to lend broadcasters an additional channel each so they could air the same programs using the old and new technologies during a transition period.
After 10 or 15 years, the old channels would be returned, repackaged and resold, perhaps for as much as 10 times today's cost.
That approach is still being pushed by the Clinton administration, which wants to get digital HDTV up and running as fast as possible and to auction the returned spectrum later, when it's worth more.
The administration also has proposed helping people buy devices to convert their old TV sets to new digital HDTV signals, which use the same code combinations as computers but send at 10,000 times the speed.
Based on past experience with color TV and video recorders, the expectation is that the faster HDTV comes on line, the faster prices will fall for sets and converter boxes.
At first, HDTV sets could sell for as much as $5,000 and converters for $700.
Meantime, broadcasters are resisting spending money upfront for a license to air digital programs when there's no market yet, when the projected cost for new cameras and other equipment would average $1 million a station and when competitors in cable and direct broadcast satellite can rely on subscription revenue to offset overhead from the changeover.
"This could destroy the future of free, over-the-air television," said Lynn McReynolds, a spokeswoman for the National Association of Broadcasters, which has a major lobbying effort under way.
Linda Golodner of the National Consumers League agrees. To her, HDTV promises to let all Americans "take part in the information revolution and not to be left behind ... with second-class TV."
But Andrew Jay Schwartzman of the Media Access Project dismisses such claims as those of a "citizen" coalition ginned up by the industry to fight the image of corporate welfare.
With recent FCC auctions of the non-TV spectrum bringing more than $15 billion into the Treasury, says Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., auctioning the HDTV spectrum "would raise at least $30 billion in revenue. That is $30 billion in new revenue without raising a single tax or cutting a single program."
As for the understanding that led the U.S. consortium to undertake crash-course development of HDTV, House Budget Committee Chairman John Kasich, R-Ohio, says: "That was then, this is now."
Other lawmakers, ranging from Senate Republican Whip Trent Lott of Mississippi to Rep. Ed Markey of Massachusetts, the longtime House Democratic leader on such issues, disagree. To them, the point isn't to sell the public airwaves as fast as the government can but to manage the spectrum in ways that make the most of its long-term value.
McCain, who had threatened to amend must-pass legislation to require an HDTV auction, is holding off for now, pending congressional hearings that start next Thursday in the Senate Budget Committee.
But the word from McCain is "Stay tuned" if the hearings drag on.