As Americans, we’re used to being offered choices. To threaten us with no television reception unless we subscribe to television executives’ money-raising schemes isn’t giving us a choice. To say it’s a “government mandate” is hardly accurate. An inept president signed this change into being while a group of salivating TV executives hovered over — hardly what most would call the democratic process at work. This new Congress should shelve the whole idea.

When TV first came on the scene, our black and white TVs didn’t obliterate radio. Radios still worked. When color TV came on the scene, our black and white TVs still worked; we weren’t denied their use. In fact, I still have a small working black and white TV on my kitchen counter so that I can perform kitchen chores while listening and occasionally glancing at the picture. The TV industry has prevailed upon a weak Congress and an equally weak ex-president to deny us reception unless we succumb to its gross selfishness. That’s hardly what one would call democracy in action. The TV execs and our new president need to retract this arbitrary behavior and allow us to exercise our democratic right to choose. Our screens absolutely should not go blank in June.

E. Isaacs Ervin