The (rather) late, great TV giveaway
Tomasa Lopez and daughter Susana receive one of the 10 million digital TVs Mexico’s government is giving away.
Cradling a flat-screen television set in her arms, Tomasa Lopez beamed at her good fortune: She’d just taken part in the world’s biggest distribution of free digital televisions.
Lopez, a domestic servant, was among thousands of people who’ve thronged a cavernous tent in the populous working-class Iztapalapa district, one of hundreds of venues across Mexico where the poor are receiving some of the 10 million digital television sets the government is giving away.
It’s a program costing the Mexican treasury the equivalent of $2.1 billion (Canadian) in a push to convert the nation from analog television signals to a digital format.
“I am happy,” Lopez said. “We’ve always wanted a digital television. We’ll see more channels. The kids will see cartoons.”
Other nations, such as Argentina, have given away digital television sets, but none on the scale of Mexico, and the program has proved controversial. Critics question why the government of President Enrique Pena Nieto is giving away 24-inch flat-screen televisions, each costing around $190, when decoder boxes that allow older analog televisions to remain in use — the U.S. solution — cost only about $50.
It’s not just the recipients of TVs who benefit. Television manufacturers clustered along Mexico’s northern border also profit, as do the two powerful media conglomerates that are moving quickly into digital services. A third television network was mandated into existence in 2013 with a constitutional reform to bring greater competition to the industry.
Already, the government has given away 4.6 million televisions in a massive operation that requires fleets of trucks to deliver the sets and masses of workers to check documents, take fingerprints and scan the bar codes of the sets to ensure each family gets only one.
Recipients are all low-income Mexicans who take part in one of several government social service programs, including Prospera, which is the national crusade against hunger, and Liconsa, a subsidized milk program.
A sense of urgency pervades the program. The constitutional reform enacted in 2013 gives the government a deadline of Dec. 31 to convert the nation to digital television. In recent weeks, government teams have been handing out between 30,000 and 40,000 sets a day, but will have to double that figure to meet the deadline.
Program administrators say it will have many benefits, among them raising the number of people with access to the Internet and cutting electricity usage, because digital TVs are considerably more efficient.
Gabriel Sosa Plata, a professor at the Autonomous Metropolitan University, thinks energy consumption might actually go up. Although analog signals are supposed to end Dec. 31, he thinks many people will buy decoder boxes and move the old sets into their children’s rooms.
“Instead of having just one television, they will have two, and that means more electricity consumption.”
Sylvia Perez Gonzalez, 32, said her young son and daughter were already pestering her. “They say, ‘Mama, who is this going to be for, for you or for us?’ ”