As much as I like technology, my television is about as old school as it gets. An old RCA 19 inch from the late 1980s. The buttons are falling off, but damn it, it works, and I see no reason to replace it.

Given the Federal Communications Commission's decision to require analog broadcasters to vacate certain frequencies in February 2009, it was looking like I was going to have to replace that TV sometime soon. As long as I'm willing to pay for cable, it looks like I don't have to.

Ars Technica is reporting that the FCC is requiring cable companies to support analog TVs like mine until 2012. The cable companies can either downsample the digital signals to analog prior to sending the channels across the wire or push out cable boxes to each customer.

I suspect the cable companies will go all digital and charge those with analog TVs extra money in order to continue to receive their analog signal. Hey, it's what AT&T is doing to all those old TDMA customers who haven't upgraded to GSM.