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from: Technology Daily

Broadcasters Want Senators To Follow House Telecom Lead

By Drew Clark

(Wednesday, July 12) Broadcasters say they stand to lose if the telecommunications legislation that cleared the Senate Commerce Committee June 28 becomes law, a position that puts another powerful interest group against the expansive approach taken in the Senate.

But because the National Association of Broadcasters says its members would gain from the narrower House-passed telecom bill, they could become an important player in pushing for the "slimmed-down" version of communications legislation. Senate Commerce Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, accepted many amendments to his bill, S. 2686, but he now says a narrower bill would have a better chance of passing the Senate.

"The baseline House bill is great for broadcasters because it offers the opportunity for telephone companies to get into video delivery," said NAB spokesman Dennis Wharton. That provides "more competition to cable, and telephone companies are wiling to pay retransmission consent," or cash fees for the right to carry local broadcast signals.

Cable operators generally refuse to pay for carriage, although they often obtain retransmission consent by agreeing to carry an array of cable television channels owned by major media companies such as Walt Disney, Time Warner and Viacom.

One core feature of both H.R. 5252, which passed the House on June 8, and Stevens' S. 2686, is relief for the Bells from local cable franchise laws. But S. 2686 includes many other sections -- dealing with rural telephone charges, digital television, anti-piracy technologies and other subjects.

Broadcasters oppose several of these provisions such as sections that would allow new low-power FM radio services to operate, technology companies to transmit Internet data over vacant television channels and cable operators to "down-convert" high-definition television broadcasts into analog streams. None of these provisions are in H.R. 5252.

Wharton, however, praised an amendment by Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., in the Senate bill that would exempt local broadcast stations from fines for airing indecent television programming if they did not have a chance to view feeds from the broadcast network.

"We are hopeful that there will be opportunities to tweak some of the more onerous provisions that would be harmful to local broadcasting," he said.

Battling low-power FM radio has been a long-range fight for the NAB, but it lost the latest round when Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., successfully attached an amendment to S. 2686 that would allow LPFM radio stations to operate under a looser interference standard approved by the FCC, but overturned by Congress.

McCain called it an antidote to media consolidation, and cited successful LPFM stations in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. He won despite opposition from Stevens, an unusual defeat for the chairman.

On using vacant channels for wireless broadband, or Wi-Fi, technology companies have joined with non-profit groups like the New America Foundation to promote the benefits of wireless broadband. Stevens supports it, and included it in S. 2686.

On Tuesday, the foundation issued a new technical analysis about "why unlicensed use of vacant TV spectrum will not cause interference to DTV viewers," updating previous technical briefings with data provided by broadcasters.