DISTANT LOCALS??

[Tampa8]

while it was part of NPS I'm pretty sure Dish did most of the "string pulling" for AAD
(AAD was added right after Dish lost the rights to provide distants)

That was one of the all time best moves made, drove the Networks bazzerk but it held up in Court. Was DISH in some way tied to AAD? I vote yes. It was never proved.....

 

[Mary Lou Maloney]

I'll challenge Iceberg... You say that the FCC was protecting the the customer? Let's go back to 1992 that forces locals in a DMA. Anti consumer right there and causing the issues we have today. Allow a company or a consumer pick their local area by choice and force competition. Seems to be the argument for ala carte but nobody cares about that. Keeping locals alive my backside... You want an FCC that is better for the people, make their positions electable. Not appointable.

I agree. Giving the customer less options. FCC is a scam when this distant locals is not allowed.

 

[Bobby]

I agree. Giving the customer less options. FCC is a scam when this distant locals is not allowed.

The FCC are the police for Congressional law when it relates to the airwaves. It's Congress that needs to allow it, not the FCC....

 

[rvvaquero]

IMO, the current structure of broadcast stations is in the best interest of the citizenry. Unchecked, there would be less than 10 major broadcast stations in the country, all broadcasting at a million mega watts. Local programming would be restricted to New York/Los Angeles/Chicago. We'd all be limited to watching the NY Yankees or LA Dodgers or (God forbid) the Cubs.

In order to protect the local station concept and their markets, reasonable exclusionary measures must be in place.

 

[Tampa8]

I have consistently posted that the locals should not be able to keep raising rates by holding providers hostage for various reasons prime among them they have exclusivity. In keeping with that I also see why your Market locals have to be the ones you get if you want to keep OTA free, unencrypted and freely recorded. Not many local advertisers are going to pay to be seen in an out of market area. In fact some National advertisers have different promotions in different areas and if the only OTA networks you received were out of market that could present problems and less advertising. There are some other factors that go into changing.

However what could work for traditional TV is in addition to your locals, you could pay a fee to get an out of market network. Some of that money would go to the local station who would be losing eyes on some of their advertising.
Another option, one used in Tampa is allowing an out of market station (they sort of are out of market) to be on the Cable systems but blacked out for certain programming.

For online it's obvious the networks are well aware there is interest in getting news from outside your market. Many stations now are available to watch their newscasts either live or archived. And there are new apps making it easier to find them and watch them. I think the idea of Distants on Cable/Satellite are at an end, but online does hold hope for more out of market programming to be available. The fact that SlingTv is starting to carry Network programming is big step forward, I realize it isn't out of market per se, but it's something that would not have happened just a few years ago.

 

[dishcomm]

well it took 8 posts for someone to spew "that line"

Lets go back in time...shall we?

Back in 1998 the FCC came up with SHVA (Satellite Home Viewer Act) which basically said if you can't get a Grade B signal and didn't sub to cable in the last 90 days you could get distants

In 2000 the FCC came up with SHVIA which allowed satellite companies to carry locals
Its been renewed a few times under new names
The rule basically stated that if you subscribed to locals you lost the ability to get distants. Simple as that. NO grey area.
(there are grandfathered rules but they are very few and far between now)

Meanwhile both Dish and Directv were still offering distants to folks who qualified (legally or waivers) while still allowing them to have locals. I was one of them. With Dish at one point I had Minneapolis locals AND ABC, FOX & NBC from 2 different cities (LA, Denver, Chicago were the cities I had distants from). I LEGALLY was out of the Grade B area for those nets but since I had locals through Dish I shouldn't have had those extra stations. But I did. If I remember right I had FOX from LA & Denver, ABC from Chicago and Denver and NBC from LA & NY along with Minneapolis locals.

The courts (the local broadcasters and the NAB) sued both Dish and DIrectv. Directv stopped doing it. Dish continued to defy the courts and they appealed and appealed until D-Day 12/1/06 when they were handed an injunction. Dish was forced to remove EVERY station not licensed in your market. So if you were a short market with missing nets? Tough.

By the way Dish got their heads in hot water for the infamous "split locals" where they would put "minor" (non Big 4 nets) on a wing dish requiring subs to either put 2 dishes on the roof or go without some locals. That was resolved too.

It took the FCC (the SAME FCC you are saying is taking away rights) which allowed Dish to import stations on the grounds they offered EVERY market (all 210 + Puerto Rico & USVI) in at least SD. Dish agreed and now they are allowed to offer stations imported ONLY in cases where there is no affiliate of a network in that market. Since Dish carries all 210 DMA's that goes back to the rule from SIXTEEN years ago of "if locals are available, no distants".

Directv can still allow distants to folks in 10 or so markets that don't have locals on satellite (but they still have to legally qualify or get waivers) and to RV folks (through an RV waiver)

Notwithstanding the whole DMA thing and all the minutiae, I think this DMA thing is at best archaic.
I think we should be able to view any tv station we wish as long as we are willing to pay for it.
tell ya what.....I would much rather have locals from my home town than those which serve my current residence. So, I would be willing to pay the fee I would for the DMA here and pay for the DMA I want....
Couple things.
1. Contracts affiliates have with college sports leagues.....I have resided in Four DMA's....NYC, Albany/Schnectady/Troy, Savannah Hilton Head and Now Charlotte...
In the Hilton head market the NBC affiliate has a contract to show SEC football. The CBS affiliate has a contract with the SEC for basketball and another deal with another conference. I can remember missing out on a lot of network programming that was NEVER aired. Here where I live now, the local CBS affiliate has a deal with the ACC to show basketball and football. Again those not interested, get danked out of network programming they may want to watch....Now...why should that be? Why is it the local affiliate gets to have a say in what I watch?.....Or more accurately, cannot watch.
I think the whole sports blackout/DMA thing should be torn up and thrown away.....JMHO

 

[dishcomm]

IMO, the current structure of broadcast stations is in the best interest of the citizenry. Unchecked, there would be less than 10 major broadcast stations in the country, all broadcasting at a million mega watts. Local programming would be restricted to New York/Los Angeles/Chicago. We'd all be limited to watching the NY Yankees or LA Dodgers or (God forbid) the Cubs.

In order to protect the local station concept and their markets, reasonable exclusionary measures must be in place.

Umm ...Save for the NFL, I'd say less than 10% of all major league sporting programming is broadcast OTA...As a matter of fact, The NFL decides which games are shown where. And more of them are moving to pay TV.
TO your first point my response is "so what?"
Look, but for the local news and the obligation the FCC places on all broadcast stations to allow a certain number of hours of public interest programming, nobody cares.
If local affiliates as we know it disappeared, there would be other methods by which news could be brought to the public. There are other non affiliated stations available.
Yeah, there would be some people who would be upset. But they will get over it.
Radio is already going down this path. Local radio is going away. It is. Very few hours of the broadcast day actually originate in a studio in the place from which the broadcast originates. Most of radio is syndicated programming.

 

[Mary Lou Maloney]

The FCC are the police for Congressional law when it relates to the airwaves. It's Congress that needs to allow it, not the FCC....

Both should get together and let us watch what we want to watch.

 

[Brussam]

You don't care but the advertisers do and that is who pays for the program generation. The Congressional goal is to have programming available at all. Take away the advertisers incentives and the industry collapses.

And like it or not, the local OTA markets constitute more viewers than Cable/Satellite and that is the viewer Congress cares about.

 

[jackson85]

There was a company called All American Direct that was (IMO) a shell company of Dish that did offer NY & SF networks in SD only. But that went away too (they were leasing one Transponder for Dish and Dish took that back)

I had my ABC channel with All American Direct. That was the only way to get ABC here in my area.

 

[Troch77]

There was a company called All American Direct that was (IMO) a shell company of Dish that did offer NY & SF networks in SD only. But that went away too (they were leasing one Transponder for Dish and Dish took that back)

Actually they did have HD channels offered the last few years of the AAD life cycle.
If I remember correctly they did cost more then the SD offerings.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G900A using Tapatalk

 

[Brussam]

That is true as I used AAD for HD DNS even after Dish offered DNS again. That is until the demise of AAD.

 

[Troch77]

That is true as I used AAD for HD DNS even after Dish offered DNS again. That is until the demise of AAD.

It was LA and Chicago for the HD correct?
And SF, and NY for SD?, or was it SF and Atlanta?

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G900A using Tapatalk

 

[Brussam]

Thinking back, there was a period when AAD first offered HD DNS but their pricing was awfully high and I didn't avail myself of them. I waited until the price dropped to something more palatable.

I remember the East Coast feeds started in Atlanta and moved to New York. But my West Coast feeds were always San Francisco as I remember.

There might have been a period of the high priced HD DNS feeds that came from Chicago.

I never cared where the feeds came from, but the San Francisco feeds were interesting during election times.

 

[sam_gordon]

Yeah, there would be some people who would be upset. But they will get over it.

So if someone ELSE is upset, they should just "get over it", but those who are upset over the DMA model shouldn't just "get over it"?

And like it or not, the local OTA markets constitute more viewers than Cable/Satellite

Agreed.

 

[DishSubLA]

A. no such thing as "distant locals". Its distants
B. Dish lost the ability years ago. They were giving it to people who legally didn't qualify. The rule was if locals were available you couldn't get distants. If locals became available after you had distants you could keep them but if you made any changes to the programming you had to take locals. They (Dish) got sued and fought it til the end. Well they lost and the FCC barred them from offering ANY station outside of your market. If you had a "Short" market (not all 4 nets)...tough noogies.

A few years ago Dish cut a deal. If they offered ALL markets in SD at minimum then they could get the ban lifted. Well they did add all markets and now they can only import a station if there is no affiliate in the market.
edit: May 2010 is when they reached the deal
http://www.satelliteguys.us/xen/threads/dish-locals-launching-in-june.213309/

Meanwhile Directv did follow the rules back when Dish got sued so they are allowed to sell distants for RV'ers and people who legally qualify.

Right Iceberg. I would add that Dish had reached a settlement with all but ONE of the major broadcasters to continue offering Distant Nets (the Networks had a price and were ready to let Charlie keep doing his thing so long as he paid them some money). However the court overseeing the suit stated that ALL the broadcasters had to agree to the settlement. The only major broadcaster refusing the settlement was FOX, which at the time was under the same NewsCorp umbrella along with DirecTV, then both FOX and DirecTV owned by Rupert Murdoch. Another reason one should not be allowed to be BOTH an MVDP and a program provider/content producer. . These types of things never cease to amaze me.

 

[DishSubLA]

Some of us have Superstitions grandfathered, but that's it on Dish these days.