Some people are wondering why we have commercials on tv stations if we pay for our service or why we have to pay so much for television when there are commercials on these tv stations.
ATTENTION CHARLOTTE DMA VIEWERS!
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Interesting how cable can get around this. A year or so ago our Binghamton, NY local ABC affiliate had a snit with our local cable company and as a result, we lost ABC on cable.
The cable company in my area is actually based in a neighboring DMA (Scranton PA) and they carry both the Binghamton and Scranton HD channels on their digital service. If you have a cable box, they block the channels you aren't supposed to get, but if you don't use their box, and instead use the QAM tuner in your TV, it will pick up both sets of channels. So we just watched the Scranton ABC station for several months while the battle raged.
The only down side was I couldn't record the channel.
It's a looooooong story. The short answer is that the laws about which channels cable companies can provide their subscribers and the laws about the channels satellite companies can carry are completely different with totally different origins and evolutions.
The long story:
Cable TV laws come from the era when cable companies were nothing more than community antennas. Cable still has the abbreviation CATV (Community Antenna TV). The first cable company in Scranton, PA in 1947 pulled in stations from NYC and Philly with antennas on nearby mountaintops and fed them to subscribers. As more and more cable companies jumped up and started doing this, local stations were starting to cry foul. Local stations have exclusive contracts with their distributors. It wasn't until 30 years later that this came to a head when Cable became a widespread item. The laws restricting the redistribution of distant channels allowed for channels which were already available and grandfathered the so-called super stations (At that point there were a couple dozen, now there are 5 and there will never be more). The laws were written so that any station with a broadcast tower within a certain distance of the cable systems head end could be carried on their system. IIRC, it was 35 miles for commercial, 50 miles for educational/pbs. But that wasn't good enough for syndicators and networks. But this not good enough for networks and syndicators.
This was also about the time that retransmission consent and "must carry" was mandated for cable. All local channels within a market must be carried by the cable company. No choice in the matter. Stations however could "opt out" and demand "consideration" such as fees and other restrictions to allow the cable company to carry their signal. Of course the cable companies could refuse to carry the station at that point and it would be 3 years before the station could change their mind and demand to be carried by the cable company. So very slowly the demands by local channels to have duplication of their programming removed began to tear away at the distant channels available on cable. or example, where I live, all the channels for the next market over can be carried on cable due to their distance from the head end, but only the PBS affiliate is carried because all the other local channels have restrictions on allowing those channels in. If one of the channels were to get into a nasty dispute with the cable company, the cable company could theoretically pick up the appropriate affiliate from next door and thumb their noses at the local.
The laws have been refined and are much more restrictive now basically enforcing the exclusivity these local channels have with their programming, but the cable laws evolved from that stand-point.
Direct Broadcast Satellite on the other hand came from "you are not allowed to distribute local channels to their local markets via satellite PERIOD." The SHVA (Satellite Home Viewers Act) was meant to "overrule" the copyright holders, networks and syndicators to allow satellite companies to carry super stations and out of market channels. Without the law, the copyright holders would block any such distribution citing exclusivity. In 1998 the first law allowing local channels to be broadcast into their local markets by satellite carriers. Dish stated offering local networks in 1997 before they were really allowed to do so. The laws were pretty specific and were so narrowly written that it did not take into account the so-called significantly viewed channels from adjoining markets or channels that were traditionally carried on cable systems. The more rural the market the bigger the impact was felt.
The last incarnation of the SHVA in 2010 is the first to address the significantly viewed "cable gap" head on. The last incarnation got the ball rolling, but it wasn't until a few weeks ago that the field was significantly leveled. But since the laws came from different foundations, the restrictions are different. In the satellite law, if you have a significantly viewed ABC network out of market and the local ABC is in a dispute with you not allowing you to carry it, you cannot carry the distant ABC. Basically, you have to offer the local before you can offer the distant.
Of course it's a hell of a lot more complicated, but these are some of the broad stokes.
See ya
Tony
different rules. Cable's rules for locals are "pick it up OTA? you can show it"
My uncle lives in a small town and the cable company has 2 NBC stations..Minneapolis and Fargo. Only one you can get OTA is Minneapolis. A couple years ago they pulled NBC Minneapolis for a dispute yet they could still watch NBC Fargo
So the 301 and legacy receivers mentioned are still good in other markets then, just not these specific markets?
The 301's and Legacy receivers will work for Western Arc right now for most local markets. The newer markets (some of them) are going up as 8PSK which these receivers cannot do
