PROGRAM OWNERS SEEK HIGHER PROGRAM FEES AS PART OF SHVIA RENEWAL
DBS operators need to pay market-based fees for programming they provide, several witnesses said Tues. during a House Judiciary Intellectual Property Subcommittee hearing on the renewal of the Satellite Home Viewer Improvement Act (SHVIA). None actually proposed an end to SHVIA, but the NAB, MPAA and the U.S. Copyright Office said the fees should be adjusted. The hearing continued after our deadline.
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DBS operators “don’t pay beans” for their licenses to carry programming, said MPAA Senior Vp Fritz Attaway, while programming costs and the costs to consumers for DBS services have increased since the first compulsory license was adopted for DBS. DBS fees didn’t even change when royalty rates were reduced in 1999, he said, and if the compulsory license is simply renewed, the lower rates will be in place for a total of 10 years. If the compulsory license is renewed, “royalty rates for the year 2004 should be increased to reflect increases that satellite companies have paid in the marketplace for comparable programming,” he said. Additionally, rates should be adjusted annually to reflect market prices, beginning in 2005, Attaway said.
Outdated conditions, like the copyright fees, need to be removed from any extension of SHVIA, said Marybeth Peters, Register of Copyrights. Peters also discussed how the transition from analog to digital should affect SHVIA, saying a new signal standard should replace the Grade B contour: “The signal intensity strength standard for digital television must be sufficiently strong to assure that a household receiving an over-the-air digital broadcast station can receive it 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.”
Ranking member Berman (D-Cal.) said in opening statements that while old issues remained, several new issues have been raised. Specifically, he said the 2-dish system currently used by EchoStar in some instances was trouble. The NAB also questioned expansion of distant network signal authorizations sought by DBS operators.