One top Democratic office is signaling optimism for...

One top Democratic office is signaling optimism for compromise going into the House Communications Subcommittee’s markup of draft Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act legislation, scheduled for early this week. The subcommittee will meet for opening statements Monday at 5:30 p.m. in 2123 Rayburn and then meet there Tuesday at 10:30 a.m. to vote on the bill (http://1.usa.gov/1jhR7Kg). “The draft legislation, which addresses a number of discrete issues raised over the course of the subcommittee’s year-long review, strikes the appropriate balance to improve the law without offering any fundamental changes to the marketplace, which are best left to our work toward a Communications Act update,” said draft author and subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., in a statement. Subcommittee Democrats expressed reservations about the bill at a recent STELA hearing, focusing on provisions on CableCARDs and language prohibiting FCC action on sharing agreements until the agency completes its media ownership quadrennial review (CD March 13 p1). “We are negotiating in good faith with our Republican colleagues,” a spokeswoman for Commerce Committee ranking member Henry Waxman, D-Calif., told us Friday. “We are hoping to come to an agreement, and look forward to working toward a bipartisan solution.” The markup’s background memo describes the draft’s STELA add-ons as “targeted, pro-consumer changes to government involvement in retransmission consent discussions and includes language to relieve cable operators of the obligation to include CableCARDs in operator-deployed set-top boxes” (http://1.usa.gov/1nKCVzM). STELA must be reauthorized by the end of the year or it will expire, and Judiciary and Commerce committees in both chambers have jurisdiction. The Senate Judiciary Committee is holding a STELA hearing Wednesday at 10 a.m. in 226 Dirksen.