goaliebob99 said:
I think i know whats going on here... today the ffc approved D*'s sat to be moved.. but yet they cant make a 15 min desion. to approve the transaction of rainbow 1... Ruperts got a hand in this.. but thats my opinion
Of course he has. He has for a while now. If you look back durning the year prior to the passage of the Dec-'04 legislation, when Dish, the DTC (I Want My HDTV) and many of us were pushing like heck for the right to provide DNS & define a digital white area and all that. Well "D" was unusually silent about it all. They wern't part of the Digital Transition Coalition and I'm almost thinking they released a statment that kind of distanced them from the whole business.
Well when the '04 Shvera passed it didn't define any white area and basically put "E"s plans of putting up the big 4 in HD on hold for a while (unless they wanted to follow the same method as "D").
I believe the plan was this:
"D" would basically not support any of the DTC lobbying and even make it very difficult for their own subs to qualify for their DNS (numerous threads support this). This made the NAB very happy.
In exchange for this, the legislation would be written in such a way (without being obvious) that not only hurt "E"s plans of "immediatly" putting up the 4 DNS (like they had been saying they would do all Summer) but also saddle them with the "one dish" for LiLs deadline.
The strategy of all this was to give local affiliates more time to upgrade and Direct Tv time to get the jump on "E" for HD LiLs.
What was not taken into account were delays in "D" getting satellites launched, "E" putting Voom channels up and the "E" Rainbow-1 deal.
If I really want to go out on a limb, I'd say that the vaselating "D" has done on it's qualification proceedures for their DNS has been a product of getting the FCC to delay as long as possible on the Rainbow-1 approval. If you reseach the numerous threads related to people qualifing for "D"s DNS, you'll find at first it was very difficult - almost no one got them; then for a while it seemed "D" relaxed a little and then it seemed to get tougher again.
