The Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act should...

The Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act should be permanently reauthorized and include major tweaks to the video marketplace, Dish and DirecTV told the Senate Commerce Committee leadership in a letter Monday. Democratic and Republican committee leadership had asked several questions of industry in February, requesting responses no later than Monday. These two companies asked for several changes to STELA, which expires at the end of 2014 unless it’s reauthorized. Congress should ban “joint sales agreements and other collusive methods used by broadcasters” and authorize the FCC “to impose baseball-style arbitration and a standstill so the programming stays up while the parties arbitrate their dispute; or, alternatively, permitting the importation of distant signals during retransmission consent disputes,” they said, also urging Congress to prevent broadcasters from blocking online content to broadcast subscribers of multichannel video programming distributors during disputes. Encourage broadcast programming to be unbundled at both wholesale and retail levels, they added. “Broadcasters abuse their retransmission consent rights during negotiations, using brinksmanship tactics and blackouts to extract ever-greater fees from MVPDs, with no end in sight,” Dish and DirecTV said in a 94-page response, much devoted to appendices. “Blackouts happen when companies like DIRECTV and DISH try to fight back and reject broadcasters’ unreasonable price demands, which often involve rate increases of several hundred percent. Retransmission consent fees raised $758 million for broadcasters in 2009. They hit $3.3 billion in 2013. They are expected to reach $7.6 billion in 2019.” They said retrans blackouts increased by a thousand percent since Congress had passed STELA, which they called “the perfect vehicle” for making video marketplace changes. Broadcasters have long argued for a clean reauthorization of STELA that doesn’t include such broad changes to the video marketplace. Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., had introduced the Consumer Choice in Online Video Act, S-1680, last fall, and the committee leadership asked whether its elements should be considered as part of STELA reauthorization. Dish and DirecTV noted “beneficial” provisions in the bill, but “several provisions appear to impose additional, unwarranted regulation on MVPDs,” the two companies said. “One such provision would prohibit many exclusive arrangements -- even those between distributors without market power and unaffiliated programmers.” STELA must pass through the Commerce and Judiciary committees in both chambers, and the House Communications Subcommittee leadership released its first draft of legislation earlier this month.