SHVERA BIll Amended With New Elements
Rep. Boucher Wants FCC To Examine Nielsen DMAs, Determine Eligibility Requirements For Distant Signals
John Eggerton -- Multichannel News, 10/15/2009 12:05:38 PM
There has yet to be a vote on a satellite reauthorization bill, but a version of the bill being marked up in the House Energy & Commerce Committee introduced as an amendment by Communications Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher (D-Va.), includes a number of new elements.
Among them: requring the FCC to study whether there is a better way to determine markets than the Nielsen DMA system; and if there needs to be a better way to determine who is ineligible to receive a distant signal than the current measure of a 30-foot antenna.
The bill also includes allowing Dish Network back into the distant network signal-delivery business in exchange for its agreeement to deliver local signals in all 210 markets, which it has agreed to to within two year.
Boucher has been pushing for that, in part because some of his constituents are in markets without local-into-local service.
