Eshoo: If DISH can carry porn, it can carry PBS

Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) has criticized DISH Network’s move on Thursday to take the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to court over a requirement that it carry public broadcasting signals in high definition (HD) by next year. 

“If DISH has room to carry pornography, they can find room for PBS,” Eshoo said in a statement on Friday.

DISH, the second-largest satellite television provider in the country, wages that the mandate infringes on its First Amendment rights by coercing it “into giving preferential treatment to programming that the government prefers, rather than leaving DISH to decide for itself how best to serve its subscribers with the programming choices that they want.”

The company filed the complaint with the district court in Las Vegas on Thursday, requesting a temporary restraining order and an order to show cause for a preliminary injunction. 

Eshoo wrote the amendment creating the HD requirement, which became law in May as part of the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act of 2010. The provision forces satellite providers to carry non-commercial stations in HD by 2011 in any market where they carry a station in HD.

In her statement, Eshoo said that DISH’s decision is “an affront to their customers” who “expect and deserve” the service.

“I and millions of other Americans depend on public television to deliver truth, entertainment, facts and beauty,” she said. 

DISH said in its filing that carrying signals in HD requires more bandwidth. It argued that deciding which stations to carry that way should be an editorial choice by the company. 

The requirement is a sign that “Congress believes that government-sponsored speech is more valuable to DISH’s subscribers than other programs that DISH might offer in HD or other uses to which DISH might put its scarce bandwidth,” the filing said. 

The filing added that DISH “values PBS programming” but the question at hand is “who gets to make the editorial judgement whether to carry local PBS stations in HD — DISH or the government.”

DISH declined to comment on Eshoo’s remarks.