WASHINGTON — In a different type of TV violence, officials battled Wednesday over whether the government should force satellite TV providers to offer Salt Lake stations in rural Utah.
The alternative sought by satellite broadcasters is to let them substitute local stations with out-of-state network affiliates.
"EchoStar would steal our viewers — your constituents — by bringing Los Angeles stations to San Juan, Kane and other rural counties," Bruce Reese, CEO of Bonneville International Corp., which owns KSL-TV, testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, is pushing to extend the Satellite Home Viewer Extension Act, which expires this year, for another five years. Among other things, it mandates that if satellite TV providers offer one local station to subscribers, they must offer them all.
However, EchoStar — one of the nation's two largest satellite TV providers (DirecTV is the other) — is proposing changes that have upset local broadcasters.
Among the proposals is to let satellite providers avoid offering local stations if the stations are not broadcast locally in digital, high-definition TV format. It wants to allow subscribers who want the upgraded signal to choose distant-market network affiliates in that format.
Reese, representing the National Association of Broadcasters, said a problem in areas such as Utah is that even though stations like KSL are digital in urban areas, they are rebroadcast in analog format by "translators" in remote areas — and federal rules now do not allow upgrading translators to digital technology.
Reese accused EchoStar of trying to use that situation to escape the local station requirements by claiming it is trying to help promote digital technology. He said EchoStar "has no intention of returning these viewers their Salt Lake . . . or any other local broadcast service" when broadcast digital is available.
Charles W. Ergen, CEO of EchoStar, said his proposal would help spread digital service in areas where broadcasters have not upgraded signals.
"Not surprisingly, this plan is vehemently opposed by broadcast interests. But these same broadcasters are busily developing lots of creative ideas for extracting all the benefits offered by digital spectrum . . . to compete with satellite and traditional cable," he said.
Ergen said the proposal would also offer consumers greater choice.
Reese also complained that EchoStar currently is discriminating against some local stations — especially those in Spanish or that offer religious programming. He said that to receive them, subscribers must buy a second satellite dish pointed to remove "wing satellites" far over the Atlantic or Pacific. Few subscribers buy them.
"We hope Congress ends this discriminatory two-dish practice," Reese said. Hatch agreed, saying, "I am particularly concerned that Spanish-language, religious and public broadcast stations have been singled out for this treatment."
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