Aereo

West Virginia Democrat Sen. Jay Rockefeller plans to introduce a bill Tuesday he said will foster online video, decrease consumer costs, and increase video content choice and quality.

It will also help Aereo to survive if the company, which streams over-the-air local broadcasts to subscribers, fends off copyright allegations in court.

Rockefeller is set to introduce his Consumer Choice in Online Video Act at 11 a.m. PT. It will clarify that antenna-rental services like Aereo, if found to be copyright legal, wouldn't be subject to the same retransmission fees broadcast networks have been extracting from pay-TV operators, according to Senate Commerce Committee aides. Rockefeller is chairman of the committee.

Television giants including Disney's ABC, CBS (the parent of CNET), Fox, and Comcast's NBCUniversal are among those suing Aereo, alleging copyright violations.

If the bill becomes law, it also would improve itemization on broadband customers' bills, prevent broadband operators from degrading online video services that compete with their own, and limit provisions in media companies' carriage contract with TV distributors from harming growth of online video, according to a release from the senator and aides. It would set up a system for online video providers to negotiate with local broadcast stations and the networks to get their programming.

The wide-ranging bill touches on a number of pressure points in the television industry today -- a la carte pricing of channels, Net neutrality, Aereo -- but such a bill also faces challenges on its path to becoming law. Legislation was proposed by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) earlier this year to force cable operators to offer their channels piecemeal rather than in bundles, but little progress has been heard about the effort in months.