The Players #1: The Public

From everything I read, the lack of public awareness of what is scheduled to happen a bit less than 35 months from now is really stunning, although I really shouldn't be too surprised, given that the story has been buried in the Business/Tech sections of most newspapers. Given the place that TV has in most households, this should be page 1, above-the-fold news, and regulary featured in the network nightly newscasts.

The biggest question in this transition is this; what will the public do when they find out? I know everybody is now referring to 2/17/09 as the "hard" date, but we should keep in mind that most members of Congress would like to be re-elected, so it will be interesting to see how much public outrage would be required to get them to change their minds.

Of course, it very well could come too late. The spectrum auction is scheduled for 2008, and there could still be a lot of clueless people out there at that time, to judge from how things are going now.