Rockefeller
Congress will likely face at least one vote this session on extending FCC indecency authority over cable and satellite but may not be able to address remaining issues involving the transition to digital television, Capitol Hill staffers said Monday.
Speaking to a National Assn. of Broadcasters confab, top congressional aides emphasized that a schedule crowded with competing interests and demands would make it hard, if not impossible, for Congress to take up the full range of broadcasters' legislative concerns.
James Reid, an aide to Sen. John D. Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), stated that his boss would address at least one issue -- broadcasters' desire to see cablers and satcasters brought under Federal Communications Commission indecency purview. Reid said Rockefeller planned to use one of the Senate's current highest legislative priorities, rewriting the 1996 Telecommunications Act, as a vehicle to force a vote on the matter.
But as much as broadcasters would welcome such a vote, which they say could level the playing field with cable and satellite, Rockefeller also intends to broaden FCC indecency authority to include violence -- measure broadcasters oppose.
Reid said the senator would try to attach these measures "in whole or in part" to the Senate Commerce Committee's markup of the telecom rewrite, scheduled for next month. "I fully expect the Commerce Committee sometime in 2006 will vote on bringing cable and satellite into the FCC's regime," Reid said.
Reid added that Rockefeller intends these measures only as a last resort if current cable and broadcast industry efforts to self-regulate indecency and violence don't work. Under Rockefeller's proposals, the FCC would decide whether the efforts work; if the agency concludes that they do not, it would then have at its disposal the broader authority Rockefeller has outlined.
Rachel Welch, who works for Senate Commerce Committee ranking member Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), and Ryan Walker, aide to House Commerce Committee member Rep. Paul Gillmor (R-Ohio), said that issues not included in last session's DTV bill might remain unaddressed this session. In that bill, Congress set a hard date for the transition and a subsidy, but parliamentary rules prevented consideration of the contentious matters of multicast must-carry, down conversion and public interest obligations.
Welch suggested that one or more of the issues may get Congress' attention but offered no idea as to which ones.
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