Get your converter box by February 17th or no TV for you:

WASHINGTON – Bucking the Obama administration, House Republicans on Wednesday defeated a bill to postpone the upcoming transition from analog to digital television broadcasting to June 12 — leaving roughly 6.5 million U.S. households unprepared for the switchover.
The 258-168 vote failed to clear the two-thirds threshold needed for passage in a victory for GOP members, who warn that postponing the transition from the current Feb. 17 deadline would confuse consumers.
House Republicans say a delay also would burden wireless companies and public safety agencies waiting for the spectrum that will be vacated by the switchover, and create added costs for television stations that would have to continue broadcasting both analog and digital signals for four more months.

In rejecting the delay, the Republicans ignored this dire warning from Virginia Democrat Rick Boucher:

Speaking on the House floor late Tuesday, Rick Boucher, D-Va., chairman of the House Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, said Congress must delay the switch because “we simply cannot permit the level of dislocation that would otherwise occur” next month.

Dislocation? Because people fail to get their converter boxes on time? Are the Joads going to strap their old analog sets to their jalopies and head out west to California, where converter boxes grow on trees and the digital signals flow like wine?