Political Quotes

“The STELA Reauthorization Act is a very important piece of must-pass legislation that ensures that millions of satellite TV subscribers continue to receive broadcast TV programming from their chosen satellite provider. The bill represents the best of what our committee does--work together to produce a bipartisan bill that does indeed strengthen our economy and streamline our laws for the innovation age. In addition to extending the laws that permit satellite providers to bring broadcast signals to hard-to-reach customers, the bill also makes targeted reforms to our Nation's woefully outdated communications laws. As our committee prepares for an updated Communications Act, these reforms are small examples of some of the deregulatory changes that we can make to spur investment and communications networks and promote competition. {time} 1515 The bill eliminates the costly cableCARD integration ban that has increased the cost of cable-leased set-top boxes and made them less energy efficient, evens the playing field for cable and satellite providers when it comes to protecting broadcast signals during Nielsen sweeps, brings fairness to retransmission consent negotiations by barring broadcast stations from jointly negotiating with programing distributors, and ensures that broadcasters who have had their business models upended by recent FCC actions indeed have adequate time to make the changes necessary to comply with the new rules.…”