WASHINGTON-The Senate will likely follow the House of Representatives’ lead and set a hard date for the completion of the digital TV transition as of Jan. 1, 2009, said Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee.
“We’ve completed the listening sessions on the DTV transition. We’re going to put together now a bi-partisan bill and both staffs, minority and majority, will be working on that. It will be, I believe, quite similar to the House staff draft that has been circulated. We believe that we’ll probably put a hard date in the bill of 2009,” said Stevens.
Stevens spoke Monday to the Federal Communications Bar Association.
The Senate bill will also follow the House and include warning labels for analog TVs, said Stevens. The House DTV draft bill would require TV manufacturers to place warning labels on analog-only sets indicating they will go dark at the completion of the DTV transition.
Breaking with the House, the Senate bill will probably include a subsidy for set-top boxes, said Stevens.
“We’re working on options for some type of program to solve the problem of set-top boxes for the analog sets that will still be in the hands of many people who cannot afford to replace them right away.”
Democrats on the House Commerce Committee were critical of the staff draft when it did not include a set-top box subsidy.
Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), chairman of the House Commerce Committee, made news last year when he said he wanted to consider a “Berlin” subsidy to help complete the DTV transition. When Berlin switched to DTV, the government subsidized the purchases of set-top boxes for low-income TV viewers who had not purchased DTVs.
The Senate Commerce Committee and its staff have been conducting closed-door listening sessions with the telecommunications and broadcasting industries regarding the DTV transition as it tries to use auction revenue from the sale of 700 MHz spectrum to help reduce the federal deficit.
In 1997, Congress said that in 2007, broadcasters would have to return the extra 6 megahertz of spectrum in the 700 MHz band given to TV broadcasters to facilitate the DTV transition. But TV broadcasters could keep the spectrum if more than 15 percent of the homes in their viewing areas could not receive digital signals. Removing the caveat has become known as establishing a hard date and has been widely encouraged by the wireless industry, which wants access to some of the spectrum.
