The Senate Appropriations Committee has recommended level funding for the Corporation of Public Broadcasting ($465 million), as well as $29 million for the Ready to Learn early education initiative with the Department of Education, and $20 million to continue a noncom tech transmission upgrade.

That is great, said America's Public Television Stations, but not as great as if it had recommended the $50 million increase in CPB's budget that the House approved last summer. CPB provides on average about 15% of station budgets, with the rest coming from corporate donations, sponsorships, and viewer contributions.

“We’re grateful that the Senate Appropriations Committee has proposed to maintain level funding for public broadcasting in a particularly challenging year,” said APTS president Patrick Butler, “and we also appreciate the Committee’s recommendations of $29 million for Ready To Learn and $20 million to continue our interconnection investment. “As negotiations on FY 2021 funding take place, we hope the $50 million increase for CPB approved by the House of Representatives is included in the final appropriations package.”

Butler points out that noncoms have actually lost about $100 million in purchasing power over the past decade of level funding, but no increases.

Butler suggests the added $50 million would be money well spent, hitting all the right policy buttons in outlining its public service opportunities. "[A]s our stations voluntarily adopt the new ATSC 3 Next Gen broadcast standard," he said, "and if we are able to invest in datacasting technology at our stations nationwide, we will have spectrum available to do even more – in telehealth, Smart Cities connections, precision agriculture, national security and other important missions of public service."

The more money there is, the "better and faster" that can be accomplished, he said.

Even as ISPs were pushing a new proposal on set-top boxes in hopes of heading off FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler's proposal, the Republican-led Senate Appropriations Committee was charting its own route to heading off the FCC's "unlock the box" brand of promoting competition.

The committee approved a fiscal year 2017 FCC appropriations bill that would require the FCC to conduct an impact study before voting on Wheeler's set-top plan, which is to require MVPDs to make their programming and data available to third-party navigation devices and apps so it could be searched alongside over-the-top content. The goal is to promote a retail market in third-party devices given that 99% of subs still rent a box from their MVPD.

The House Appropriations Committee last week passed its FCC appropriations bill with the set-top pausing rider. Now Senate Republicans have followed suit, much to the chagrin of set-top proposal backers. 

“We are disappointed by the Appropriations Committee targeting the FCC for working to protect consumers, as Congress directed," said Kate Forscey, government affairs associate counsel for Public Knowledge. "This attack is a rider which attempts to stymie the Commission’s ongoing proceeding to ‘Unlock the Box’. The rider hitched onto this bill would further forestall a truly competitive video marketplace, for which consumers and creators yearn and which the FCC now stands poised to deliver."

“Congress has twice asked the FCC to examine this monopoly control over set top boxes to free both prices and innovation, most recently in 2014," said Computer & Communications Industry Association Ed Black. "It makes no sense to use a backdoor policy rider to delay the very reforms the full Congress asked the FCC to consider. This delay by rider would just allow the cable industry more months to gouge customers. Why would we do that?”

CCIA members include Google, Netflix and Amazon.