After much delay and self-generated media hype, the FCC is officially putting the ax to analog television signals in the U.S. starting today, June 12^th, making your old TV with the rabbit ears officially useless. Our analog AM and FM radio signals are next up on the chopping block. The Digital Audio Broadcast (DAB) Transition hopes to make your radio receiver obsolete as well, although the FCC currently says it “will not establish a deadline for radio stations to convert to digital broadcasting.”
The reason for the transition is because they say non-directional high-powered signals like traditional TV and radio are wasteful of the electromagnetic spectrum, and could instead be used for low-power transmissions such as cell-phones and wireless internet. But according to the Fermi paradox, the transition away from analog communication could cost us a chance of making contact with other intelligent life. High-powered wasteful radio signals like KGMI’s can be heard across the universe, so that means all the horrible-sounding broadcasts I made as an intern are still out there somewhere! But even if an advanced alien civilization does exist light years away, if our species is any indication they would have already gone through their own digital transition. So we may never hear them, and now they will probably never hear us.