STAVRA Cruising Toward Smooth Committee Approval, Possible Flurry of Amendments
Passage of the Satellite Television Access and Viewer Rights Act (S-2799) seems assured at its Wednesday Senate Commerce Committee markup session, committee leaders said. But amendments are still in flux, with some uncertainty among lobbyists and officials about which lawmakers will simply propose and withdraw their filed amendments and which will press for a vote.
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More than half a dozen Commerce members filed amendments to STAVRA Monday and were also able to do so Tuesday. Senate Commerce will mark up the bill at 2:30 p.m. in 253 Russell Wednesday.
Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., will, as expected (CD Sept 16 p2), introduce a pay-TV industry billing practices amendment to STAVRA, she said in a news release about the amendment Tuesday. She included a one-page outline of the text. That amendment would apply several of what she considers key consumer protections to the way cable and satellite companies bill their customers.
McCaskill doesn’t know whether she will press committee leaders for a vote Wednesday, she told us at the Capitol Tuesday. “It depends, yeah,” McCaskill said. “We're still talking. And there’s a lot of people that have amendments and the question is whether this is the time that we're going to take votes on those kinds of things that obviously are not -- the chairman spent a lot of time trying to work out differences on the bill, so I'm not sure yet how many of the amendments will be offered or just be discussed."
McCaskill called the amendment “a first step in holding these companies accountable by requiring better notification of price changes, better guidelines for bundled services, and a uniform standard of transparency in billing,” in a written statement. Earlier this year, McCaskill asked consumers to share their problems with pay-TV billing, and she received 428 responses within 10 days, her news release said. She chairs the Commerce Consumer Protection Subcommittee and may also hold a hearing on these issues later this year. Even if she doesn’t press for a vote Wednesday, “oh, sure,” she will continue to pursue the legislation in the months ahead, she told us.
Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., filed an amendment Tuesday that included his Let Our Communities Access Local TV Act, legislation he introduced in late July with Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb. The Tuesday amendment text would require the FCC to submit a report to Congress within 18 months on “the extent to which consumers in each local market have access to broadcast programming from television broadcast stations located outside their local market” and “whether there are alternatives to the use of designated market areas to define markets that would provide consumers with more local programming options” in addition to “the potential impact the alternatives” on “localism and on broadcast television locally, regionally, and nationally.” The report should include “recommendations on how to foster increased localism in States served by out-of-State designated market areas.” The FCC should look at “the impact that designated market areas that cross State lines have on access to local programming,” “the impact that designated market areas have on local programming in rural areas” and “the state of local programming in States served exclusively by out-of-State designated market areas,” the text said. It said Booker filed the amendment on behalf of himself and Fischer.
Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and ranking member John Thune, R-S.D., wrote STAVRA, which has now gone through multiple incarnations to assuage broadcaster concerns. “It’s all a part of working out an agreement with Sen. Thune so we can get an underlying bill passed, which we will,” Rockefeller told us Tuesday at the Capitol of the latest pared-down draft of STAVRA, circulated Friday and just over a third the size of an earlier version. Commerce “adequately” has support to clear STAVRA from committee Wednesday, said Rockefeller. A Republican staffer had told us Monday that Thune believes there should be little to no STAVRA opposition, guaranteeing Commerce clearance.
TiVo also strongly backed an amendment that Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., filed Monday, modifying the STAVRA draft’s set-top box integration ban provision. Markey “is the architect of the set-top box consumer protections that were built into the Telecom Act 18 years ago,” said TiVo General Counsel Matt Zinn in a statement. “His amendment would preserve vital consumer choice and competition in the set-top box marketplace, saving consumers money and encouraging greater innovation.”
DirecTV and Dish Network back the latest STAVRA draft, they said in a statement Tuesday. “We urge the Senate Commerce Committee to pass the version of STAVRA that was released as the manager’s amendment last Friday,” they said. “Although that version does not contain the ‘Local Choice’ provisions that were originally proposed by Senators Rockefeller and Thune, we remain enthusiastic supporters of ‘Local Choice’ and other retransmission consent reform efforts that protect consumers by ending local channel blackouts.”