Rural-TV Loan Guarantee Bill Gains Senate Sponsors

Communications Today, Feb 24, 2000

The old adage that politics leads to strange bedfellows could be used again to describe the unlikely pair of key sponsors for a bill that would offer federal loan guarantees to deliver local channels to rural TV viewers.

Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas), chairman of the Banking Committee, and Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.), chairman of the Commerce Committee's communications subcommittee, agreed to team up to introduce legislation that put them at odds last fall. They hammered out a compromise bill that would differ from a provision stripped by Gramm from the Satellite Home Viewer Improvement Act last fall, but the new bill would achieve the same result.

The compromise contains one key change that would limit the amount of the federal loan guarantee to 70 percent of the up to $1.25 billion needed to support the delivery of local channels to rural TV watchers. The other no-table revision involves the creation of an oversight board, composed of officials from the Treasury, Federal Reserve and NTIA, to monitor the Rural Utilities Service's administration of the program, congressional sources said.

Satellites offer the most likely technology to provide the service. The target date to begin offering local channels to rural viewers is Dec. 31, 2006. Without the loan guarantees, no organization was expected to provide such a service due to the $1 billion-plus cost of building, launching and deploying satellites.

The bill is expected to clear the House, which approved the SHVIA bill with the rural TV amendment last year in a 411-8 vote. A press briefing on the bill has been scheduled for Thursday at 3:30 p.m. Paul Dykewicz