The Satellite Home Viewer Reauthorization Act is one of those bills that requires a going-over by more than one committee in each house of Congress. Then you can add in consideration by relevant subcommittees, which is why the sun never seems to set on a SHVERA event.
The House Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet debated the bill recently and fired it up to its parent Committee on Energy and Commerce. That body has put the bill on the schedule for mark up Thursday, 10/15/09 at 10AM, along with a few other pieces of business.
RBR-TVBR observation: At the subcommittee meeting, and at the others held in the Senate, there has been general agreement to avoid major action on the more controversial issues attached to this legislation in order to get it done promptly before existing legislation expires.
The most controversial aspect has been providing in-state broadcast service to so-called orphan communities that are across state lines from the center of a multi-state DMA. Broadcasters have been willing to accept local news programming coming in from such stations as long as all other competitive and duplicative programming is blacked out. Satellite companies would of course rather use the signals in their entirety.
Unless there has been back room movement on this issue, the full committee mark up should go smoothly. We’ll see.
