Dish's Dodge Proposes Distant Signal Retransmission Alternative

Dish executive vice president R. Stanton Dodge plans to tell Congress that not only should it renew the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act (STELA), but it should do more in order to comprehensively reform the "broken" retransmission consent regime.

In prepared testimony for a House Judiciary Committee subcommittee hearing on STELA, Dodge says that it is clear STELA should be renewed so that 1.5 million American households won't be left "without access to a full complement of network channels." A STELA renewal would continue the compulsory license that allows satellite operators to import distant network-affiliated TV stations into markets where there are none to viewers who can't get a sufficiently viewable version of the ones they do get. Warning that without some congressional or Federal Communications Commission action, millions more screens will likely go dark every year during retransmission blackouts, Dodge says that action could take a number of forms.