WASHINGTON-Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), former chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee and frequent critic of the TV broadcast lobby, will introduce a bill next Tuesday that will set the hard date for the completion of the digital TV transition at Jan. 1, 2009.
McCain’s move will pre-empt the current chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), who said earlier this week that he is preparing a similar bill, but did not give a timeframe for introducing his bill.
The McCain bill will be similar to legislation known as the Save Lives Act (the Spectrum Availability for Emergency Response and Law Enforcement to Improve Vital Emergency Services), which he introduced last year, but will reduce the set-top box subsidy to $463 million plus administrative costs. This amount is expected to cover the 9.2 million low-income homes that receive their TV signals from free-over-the-air broadcasting. Low income is defined as up to 200 percent above the poverty line.
Stevens said earlier this week his legislation likely would include subsidies for set-top boxes. Democrats on the House Commerce Committee were critical of the House 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.
What is still unknown is how a subsidy program will be structured. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin Thursday told reporters the closest the Federal Communications Commission has come to administering such a program is universal service.
“The FCC’s most relevant experience is in the context of universal service,” said Martin. “We have never implemented quite that kind of subsidy program like they are talking about. Universal service would be the only comparable thing the FCC has done.”
McCain is planning a press conference for 1:30 p.m. June 14 that will include former Gov. Thomas Kean (R-N.J.), and former Rep. Lee Hamilton (D-Ind.), chairman and vice chairman of the 9/11 Commission. The 9/11 Commission said the spectrum that TV broadcasters are using needs to be reclaimed to help public safety.
Last year’s Saves Lives Act was at the center of a debate during consideration of the intelligence-reform bill, but the Senate sacrificed commercial wireless interests as it passed an amendment that would force TV broadcasters to give back the 700 MHz spectrum if public-safety users showed a bona-fide need.
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 they try to use auction revenue from the sale of 700 MHz spectrum to help reduce the federal deficit.
“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 Monday.
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.
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.
