The rabbit-ears television antenna is the only way our family stays tuned into the world during summer vacation.

In a tiny cottage in a working class neighborhood of Rhode Island’s South County this past August, no cable TV meant watching Michael Phelps and other Olympians through a veritable blizzard of static on NBC affiliate WJAR, Channel 10, in Providence, located 35 miles to the north.

Things will be different this coming summer. I will be able to re-aim that antenna until I’m blue in the face, and still the screen will be blank. Unless, that is, I take the time to buy and install a digital-to-analog converter for the cottage’s TV.

It’s estimated that hundreds of thousands of television watchers will be faced with dead air on February 17 — less than four weeks from today — unless Congress acts to force the Federal Communications Commission to delay the powering down of every analog transmitter at U.S. television station.

Never mind the Israeli-Hamas war and the broadening scandals with Bernard Madoff’ and Rod Blagojevich, President Obama’s first real test in office will be whether he allows the electorate to lose Vanna White’s nightly letter turning. Unless the voters/viewers subscribe to cable, Verizon FIOS, DirecTV or Dish Network, they need to have purchased an HDTV or analog-to-digital converter box or it will be dead air time.

In recent days, Consumers Union threw its support behind a bill co-sponsored by lawmakers whose committees oversee the FCC — Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, and Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va. — to delay until June 12 the switch to digital.

The three big broadcast television networks certainly want to see the HDTV switchover day delayed so they can postpone further slippage of their influence. Cable stations and Internet news sites surged in popularity during the last elections-fueled ratings sweep.

Even though the overall number of people watching the network evening newscasts fell by 280,000 viewers in Nielsen Media Research’s fall ratings period, ABC, CBS and NBC together still accounted for some 23 million watchers.

The fact that a sizable number of those viewers — those whose TVs receive their signal from the airwaves — have not plunked down $50 to $75 to buy a converter is major reason to delay pulling the plug. Those close to the TV business argue that consumers are stupid procrastinators who either missed the millions of public service announcements or made a conscious decision to ignore the Feb. 17 hard stop.

Consumers Union contends that a federal government bungled a program to dole out coupons that defray the cost of the digital upgrade.  There’s also an argument that poor people and elderly people who do not have technical skills to rejigger their TV sets’ antenna systems, have not received enough hand holding.  One very funny PSA on this topic features an octogenarian who would benefit handsomely from a visit by Best Buy’s Geek Squad.

One additional wrinkle that has developed in the years since the FCC set the Feb. 17 deadline is that a whole bunch of people are now unemployed, unable to pay for cable TV, and sitting around the house watching TV.

It’s on that very same TV they learned from the U.S. Department of Labor that new jobless claims had reached their highest in 26 years with 589,000 individuals filing unemployment claims.

Let those people keep their TVs receiving the networks and, if they are lucky, PBS, and a Paxton station that features all-Waltons weekends.

Even if Obama and Congress let FCC have their way on February 17, some smart marketers (or politician) is going to buy up thousands of analog-to-digital boxes, affix their logo and become the heroes of those who did not manage to upgrade on their own. That’s how friends are made.

An unfortunate truth is that many kids’ breakfast food choices are based on the appeal of cartoon rabbits, toucans and elephants touting sugary cereals.

But we grow out of that kind of consumerism, right?

Similar marketing seems to be working well on grown men and women. Advertising the solutions to solve some of the human body’s most repulsive maladies now is done with the help of comical animated characters.

Digger, the sharp-clawed enemy of toe nails, spread faster than athlete’s foot when introduced by Novartis as the cartoon personification of its Lamisil brand. I am sure Digger’s face is being used as an avatar by more than a few teens.

Reckitt Benckiser Inc.’s over-the-counter line of expectorants, Mucinex, has a whole family of green phlegm characters to illustrate how fast a booger can move when the right medicine arrives on the scene.

Outside of pharma, the Düsseldorf, Germany, office of BBDO recently introduced a tiny blue cartoon being, in the form of a single calorie, for PepsiCo’s Pepsi Max diet cola. Print ads were posted on the European ad-gallery site adgoodness.com, prompting plenty of controversy over the fact that the calorie commits suicide because it’s lonely. AdAge has since written on the campaign and subsequent outcry from those arguing the issue of suicide is sacrosanct.

I recall one B2B company in the investor relations industry that successfully linked its brand to a cartoonist’s creation. an online database of fund managers and other financial industry contacts, used the image of a baby, dressed in a top hat, throwing around cash. At one memorable conference for the National Investor Relations Institute, Big Dough startled more than a few of normally staid IR officers when it employed a Disneyesque costumed character – a seven-foot-tall baby – to walk around the exhibition hall. Whether the non-traditional marketing approached helped I don’t know, but Big Dough captured plenty of market share among corporate users before being rebranded as part of a larger suite of Ipreo’s services.

I’m guessing we don’t see more B2B businesses tied to fictional characters or cartoon imagery because so much of an organization’s success rides on the credibility and message of the CEO. Marketing officers at B2B firms spend their time making sure the CEO succeeds as chief storyteller and cheerleader for the brand and its heritage.

But given the global crisis of confidence regarding the integrity of executives leading businesses of all sizes, I can’t actually see the downside of making a B2B firm’s CEO sharing the limelight with someone a bit more believable and, yes, fun.  The “Why is Dora Crying?” ad in major newspapers last week was a damn effective way for Viacom to pressure Time Warner to cut a better deal to keep Nick Jr. on its cable systems.

Granted, most specialty chemical companies, makers of superconductors and developers of enterprise accounting software do not have the corporate culture or desire to support borrowing from the consumer marketing toolbox.

But many of the customers and employees of those same conservative organizations privately cheer for the underdog breakout firms who occasionally pop onto the scene and take our breath away because they refuse to conform to conventional wisdom.

Assuming we ever get the steel industry going again in the United States, I’d love to see a fire-breathing dragon conduct the quarterly results conference call.