Proposed House Bill Would Extend Satellite Blanket License to April 30

Another extension introduced after five-year plan is caught up in House

By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 3/17/2010 12:35:23 PM

It looks like the satellite blanket license might have to continue to be a temporary tag.

According to a copy of the bill's language supplied to B&C, HR 4851 has been introduced in the House to extend the March 28 expiration of that license to April 30.

When Congress failed to pass a five-year extension of the license that allows satellite companies to offer distant network TV station signals to subscribers who can't receive a viewable local version, the license was extended to Feb. 28 along with several jobs-related programs that were also scheduled to sunset Dec. 31, 2009.

That deadline passed without either a reauthorization or extension and the license briefly expired, but was extended within days to March 28 in hopes that the full, five-year extension could pass by then.

It did pass in the Senate, with language to retroactively cover the few days when the license expired, but that bill has gotten caught up in the House, according to a Senate Judiciary Committee source, hence the introduction of yet another extension.

The House is expected to take up that bill Wednesday (March 17), but then it will have to go to the Senate. 

When the full, five-year extension does pass, it will include a provision for providing satellite delivery of local signals to the remaining couple dozen markets where it has been uneconomical to deliver them.

That is thanks to a deal that allows DISH network back into the business of delivering distant signals in exchange for serving those markets. DISH has been barred from distant signal delivery after a court concluded it had not accurately identified the subscribers who qualified for them. Determining eligibility is key, since a local ABC affiliate, for example, does not want a distant ABC affil to be imported to viewers who can receive its signal.