Upton: House Won't Take Up Second Digital TV Bill

[SOURCE: Technology Daily, AUTHOR: Drew Clark]
With Congress having approved a firm deadline for the nation’s transition to digital television broadcasts, the House Commerce Committee will not consider additional legislation this year dealing with DTV-related issues, said Telecommunications and the Internet Subcommittee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI). He said a forthcoming rewrite of the 1996 Telecommunications Act “will take all of our attention" in 2006. Rep Upton says the House will give final approval to budget legislation that includes provisions on the digital television transition on February 1. Two provisions of the House-passed digital TV legislation were stripped from the final budget reconciliation bill over concerns involving Senate procedural rules. One provision was designed to increase consumer education of the DTV transition by requiring some form of warning labels on analog-only televisions still on the market. The other deleted item would have let cable operators "down-convert" high-definition signals for analog cable customers; the absence of this provision from the final legislation could force nearly 40 million households to upgrade and pay more for digital cable service. Rep Upton acknowledged that the drawback of not considering a second DTV bill this year is that these issues would not be addressed. But he contended that the two provisions are not important enough to revisit separately. The National Association of Broadcasters is pushing for a second DTV bill that would address protections of digital content and "multicast must-carry," a requirement that cable operators carry all of digital broadcasters signals.
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