WASHINGTON, D.C. - The full Senate on Thursday passed legislation that would set up a federal loan guarantee program to facilitate the delivery of local signals outside of areas that satellite providers plan to, or are able to, serve with local stations. The bill is similar to one passed by the House Commerce Committee Wednesday night. Senate Banking Committee Chairman Phil Gramm (R-Texas) said, "I'm proud of this bill. We will have to go to conference with the House, where my goal will be to stay true to the two principles we set out in the bill. No. 1, we want to try to enhance the chances that people who live in rural America, especially in isolated areas, can receive their local television signals. Second, we want to be good stewards of the taxpayers' money. "We want to guarantee to the best of our ability that not only will the loans be made, but that they'll be paid back. It doesn't do us any good to make bad loans. Bad loans don't produce local TV signals. Bad loans simply cost the taxpayer hundreds of millions of dollars and do no good." Gramm also recognized the efforts of Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) on the legislation. "People in rural America should remember the leadership of Conrad Burns when they sit down on Saturdays to watch football on ABC," Gramm said. Among its provisions, the bill calls for a loan guarantee program in the amount of $1.25 billion, 80 percent of which will be guaranteed by federal money. The bill also establishes a three-member board to approve the loans. The board would include the Secretaries of Agriculture and Treasury, and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. Included in the Senate bill is an amendment that recognizes the role of rural electric agencies and that they be included in the loan guarantee program. The Senate voted 99-0 in favor of the amendment, which was offered by Sen. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.). NRTC Spokesman Harry Thibedeau said, "The near unanimous vote today fulfills a promise the Senate made last fall to bridge the digital divide plaguing rural America. Sens. Johnson and Baucus (D-Mont.), and other rural senators, won a hard-fought campaign to get the opportunity for rural cooperatives to participate in this program."

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House Rural Bill Contains Northpoint Measure

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The House Commerce Committee passed by voice vote Wednesday the Rural Local Broadcast Signal Act, which allows for loan guarantees in the amount of $1 billion for the delivery of local signals to small and rural markets. The Subcommittee on Telecommunications reported the bill to the full committee last week. The subcommittee considered some 20 amendments to the structure of the rural loan program before passing the bill, and Wednesday's full committee mark-up included a number of proposed amendments and changes to the legislation. A significant change to the bill that impacts the satellite TV industry came in an amendment from Rep. Mike Oxley (R-Ohio). The amendment, which passed by voice vote, conditions approval of any loan guarantees to the Federal Communications Commission conducting an independent test of harmful interference to satellite services that are eligible for loan guarantees. Specifically, the amendment directs the FCC to refrain from allocating spectrum for, or licensing, a spectrum sharing plan such as the one proposed by Northpoint unless and until it determines that Northpoint's proposed operations will not cause any harmful interference to existing or future DBS consumers. The Satellite Broadcasting and Communications Association commended the Commerce Committee for passing the amendment. "The Northpoint proposal threatens the benefits of increased competition to cable - including a real chance to constrain skyrocketing cable rates, that consumers have gained as a result of the long, difficult battle in Congress that resulted in passage of last year's Satellite Home Viewer Improvement Act," SBCA President Chuck Hewitt said.. "Clearly, the House Commerce Committee does not want interference from Northpoint to stop that progress in its tracks." During the debate, Oxley and House Telecommunications Subcommittee Chairman Billy Tauzin called on the FCC not to wait for final passage of the bill, but to call the parties in and begin independent testing now. "SBCA appreciates their efforts and stands ready to cooperate immediately with that request," Hewitt said. The rural loan legislation, originally co-sponsored by Reps. Rick Boucher (D-Va.) and Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), calls for a guarantee of up to $1 billion, with 80 percent guaranteed by the federal government. Although the bill is "technology neutral" as far as determining who is eligible to apply for the loans, the bill could assist satellite carriers. National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative spokesman Harry Thibedeau said the bill, "calls for a priority scoring system that rewards projects that offer the broadest and most ubiquitous service, which helps the satellite industry." Thibedeau said the NRTC is pleased that the bill moved out of the Commerce Committee and that rural lenders like the CFC and CoBank will, "have the opportunity to participate in the program and serve the unserved." The committee also agreed to an amendment from Tauzin. The amendment limits the number of local broadcast signals that must be carried by a multichannel provider to no more than the largest number of local broadcast signals carried by the cable system serving the largest number of subscribers in that market. The House Agriculture Committee approved the bill in February.

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DirecTV Adds Phoenix Independent Station

Want to catch Diamondbacks baseball and you live in Phoenix? You gotta get DirecTV. The DBS powerhouse revealed Thursday that it will add independent broadcast station KTVK (channel 3) to its local-into-local service for the Phoenix area. KTVK's coverage of Arizona Diamondbacks baseball and other programs - such as Oprah, Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune - are big ratings winners for the station. KTVK is the first independent station DirecTV has added to its local channel packages. Other markets delivered by DirecTV carry only local ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC channels plus a national PBS feed. DirecTV's local channel package in Phoenix includes KNXV (ABC), KPHO (CBS), KPNX (NBC) and KSAZ (FOX), and sells for $5.99 a month. KTVK will be delivered from DirecTV's core 101-degree location along with the other channels. DirecTV spokesman Bob Marsocci said the addition of other independent stations for local channel packages will be determined "on a market-by-market basis over time." DirecTV and EchoStar's DISH Network carry superstations WGN from Chicago and TBS in Atlanta. DISH Network offers a superstation package for $4.99 a month that includes stations from Los Angeles, Denver, New York and Boston. Whether DirecTV plans its own superstation package, Marsocci said, "the extreme difficulties of adhering to provisions that may be contained in network non-duplication, syndicated exclusivity and sports blackout rules" may make that impossible. The Federal Communications Commission is presently developing those rules.

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Lawsuit of the Week

Here's an innovative idea for today's lawsuit-happy DBS market. A hacker down south didn't much like DirecTV's latest electronic countermeasure. So, he suggested to his friendly online theft-support group that DirecTV had "broken the law" by "tampering with my receiver." Get real, a less litigation-crazed colleague replied. The ECM only affected the software, which DirecTV has every right to do. Still, the fellow mused, "It would be quite amusing to see hackers who are stealing the signal haul DTV into court and try to prove their case(s)."

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N TV: Sky Angel Gets Dream Network