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New TV Bill Seeks More Local Channel Availability
Mon Jul 13, 2009 at 02:00 PM ETTags: Industry Trends, High-Def Broadcasting (all tags)
Aims to help orphan counties get home town programming.
In a recent bill introduced to the House of Representatives, Mike Ross of Arkansas is pushing to make more local options available to people who otherwise wouldn’t have them. Those living on state borders are often lumped into satellite and cable packages that don’t offer their specific local programming. Mike Ross’ Television Freedom Act looks to change that.
If successful, the bill will allow satellite and cable companies to provide adjacent market local TV stations in these split markets. Sounds good for the consumer, but content providers aren’t as excited. They say that allowing local channels to be carried over like this would create duplicate programming; except DirecTV that is, who are standing in support of this bill.
Not mentioned at the moment is whether the bill targets HD channels or not, and what that might mean for signal quality and pricing. More information, as well as a copy of Ross’ letter sent to fellow congressmen about his intentions can be found here.
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