House panel OKs bill, paving way for Dish re-entry

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A court injunction barring DISH Network Corp from broadcasting out-of-market programing would be lifted under a satellite and cable TV reauthorization legislation approved by House lawmakers on Wednesday.

By a 34-0 vote, the House Judiciary Committee backed legislation aimed at renewing the copyright license for another five years to allow satellite companies to transmit distant network programing to subscribers.

The bill, called the Satellite Home Viewer Extension and Reauthorization Act, would allow Dish to transmit broadcasts to so-called "short markets," which lack one of the major broadcasts such as Walt Disney Co's ABC, CBS Corp, News Corp's Fox, and NBC, a unit of General Electric Co.

As part of the deal to lift a court action, Dish agreed to fill in the gap in the 28 short markets and at the same time serve all 210 markets with local TV station programing.

"The offer that has been made by the Dish Network to serve all 210 markets is a generous offer," Representative Rick Boucher, a Judiciary committee member and chairman of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on communications, said in a telephone interview.

"Unless one carrier or the other makes a promise such as this we do not have a prospect anywhere in the near term of getting all 210 markets served with local-into-local service," Boucher, who also has introduced a separate bill, told Reuters.

Dish, controlled by satellite entrepreneur Charlie Ergen, has faced intense competition in recent quarters from its larger rival DirecTV Group, as well as phone and cable operators.

Boucher, a Virginia Democrat, said the promise will force Dish, which is based in Englewood, Colorado, to use up more satellite capacity.

Boucher said that within the next month he hopes the full House Energy and Commerce Committee will mark up his bill which will be merged with the Judiciary committee's bill.

The measure was lauded by Public Knowledge, a public interest group, that said the bill allows for full competition among satellite providers and incumbent cable and telephone companies in rural areas.

"The bill makes certain that consumers everywhere will have their full set of broadcast network stations," Public Knowledge President Gigi Sohn said in a statement.

Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday introduced similar legislation that would renew the licenses which is set to expire on December 31.

But Sohn urged the Senate to go one step further by using the House Judiciary bill as a blueprint.

Not all who voted in support of the bill, however, were happy with it. Representative Lamar Smith, top Republican on the Judiciary panel, said he had serious reservations about letting Dish back into the distant signal market after a court found that Dish broken copyright laws.

"The decision to legislatively overturn the court-ordered permanent injunction that prohibits Dish from exploiting the distant signal license is something I don't understand," said Smith who said the overall bill was important enough to support.

(Reporting by John Poirier; Editing by Gary Hill)