Fisher Communications Channels are BACK on Dish!

[Shortfork]

Won't we see EchoStar 129 W replaced with something else once it's C-2's signals?? (Id on the aim dish screen)

I'm seeing somewhat higher than normal signal strength here on the almost west coast (usable 99% of the time, usually above 30, below 50 for all TP's).. Will be home in a day or two (way west coast) and can check signal there.. (usually unusable)

Butttt....

I still think I'm gonna bail on DN if I can get outta my contract. Just too many headaches, and, there's some neat stuff coming up on ABC and we don't get ABC up here in the "great white north" anymore..

Betcha if DN lose a few more customers over this "protest your local ABC channel for us" BS on the special "charile chat" .... if that's what they call the "Important News- Press Info" line of BULLSHIRT they are feeding subscribers about their negotiations with Fisher Broadcasting up here..

Both cable companies in my area (Comcrust in PDX area, Charter Netnowork in rural areas) are able to negotiate contracts with what DN would make you think is the "evil local broadcaster"..

Used to work for an ex-marine.. (scuse me.. I know, there are no ex-Marines, you are always a Marine!) didn't matter what the problem was, you didn't try to explain it (the problem) you ONLY gave him your solution to whatever was in front of you.. no matter WHO was to blame, if you tried to explain, you'd get a sternly worded "THAT sounds like an excuse to me" from him..

In-other-words.. the end user of whatever anyone, anything is doing, does not care about why something is NOT working, the end user wants to know how you are going to make whatever is not working WORK!

DN is playing a blame/sympathy game with this Pacific NW ABC affliate thing and they need to get a clue..

Mods/Admin.. PLEASE, feel free to modify this message out of this thread into its own, I do so hate dragging things OFF TOPIC.. but this is just so frustrating..

Over 100 days with Dish.. actually almost 120 now.. got a $10. rate increase, almost as soon as I signed up (turbo HD gold), have NEVER had a SINGLE day when I could get HD signal long enough to watch an entire program, and they tell me I have to PAY them $10. per month for every month short of 24 months if I bail on the contract... which, they have never lived up to their end of???

God this is unbelievely frustrating and I just want that damn DN cluster off my roof, and their damn box outta my living room..

OK.. I'm breathing again..

Again, mods, admin.. feel free to edit thread and move my post..

Had a rough day and hadda vent!

Wayne Sagar
"some peope say I am an electron dealer"

 

[omeletpants]

Won't we see EchoStar 129 W replaced with something else once it's C-2's signals?? (Id on the aim dish screen)

I'm seeing somewhat higher than normal signal strength here on the almost west coast (usable 99% of the time, usually above 30, below 50 for all TP's).. Will be home in a day or two (way west coast) and can check signal there.. (usually unusable)

Butttt....

I still think I'm gonna bail on DN if I can get outta my contract. Just too many headaches, and, there's some neat stuff coming up on ABC and we don't get ABC up here in the "great white north" anymore..

Betcha if DN lose a few more customers over this "protest your local ABC channel for us" BS on the special "charile chat" .... if that's what they call the "Important News- Press Info" line of BULLSHIRT they are feeding subscribers about their negotiations with Fisher Broadcasting up here..

Both cable companies in my area (Comcrust in PDX area, Charter Netnowork in rural areas) are able to negotiate contracts with what DN would make you think is the "evil local broadcaster"..

Used to work for an ex-marine.. (scuse me.. I know, there are no ex-Marines, you are always a Marine!) didn't matter what the problem was, you didn't try to explain it (the problem) you ONLY gave him your solution to whatever was in front of you.. no matter WHO was to blame, if you tried to explain, you'd get a sternly worded "THAT sounds like an excuse to me" from him..

In-other-words.. the end user of whatever anyone, anything is doing, does not care about why something is NOT working, the end user wants to know how you are going to make whatever is not working WORK!

DN is playing a blame/sympathy game with this Pacific NW ABC affliate thing and they need to get a clue..

Mods/Admin.. PLEASE, feel free to modify this message out of this thread into its own, I do so hate dragging things OFF TOPIC.. but this is just so frustrating..

Over 100 days with Dish.. actually almost 120 now.. got a $10. rate increase, almost as soon as I signed up (turbo HD gold), have NEVER had a SINGLE day when I could get HD signal long enough to watch an entire program, and they tell me I have to PAY them $10. per month for every month short of 24 months if I bail on the contract... which, they have never lived up to their end of???

God this is unbelievely frustrating and I just want that damn DN cluster off my roof, and their damn box outta my living room..

OK.. I'm breathing again..

Again, mods, admin.. feel free to edit thread and move my post..

Had a rough day and hadda vent!

Wayne Sagar
"some peope say I am an electron dealer"

So, what day do you think the satellite will be working?

 

[STL]

Both cable companies in my area (Comcrust in PDX area, Charter Netnowork in rural areas) are able to negotiate contracts with what DN would make you think is the "evil local broadcaster".

From what I read, Fisher wants to up their rate 82% -- so to me that seems a bit out of line. And of course the local cable companies can easily negociate a deal b/c they just pass that added cost directly on to the consumer!

 

[Cocophone]

I agree that Fisher is asking for too large of rate increase. However, I not happy with Dish Network. Currently, I've been without my local CBS station for over a month. My options are to:

1. Buy an OTA antenna to receive my CBS station.

2. Switch to Cable or DirectTV

3. Wait for an unknown length of time for Dish and Fisher to reach a settlement.

If I go with option 1. I will not be able to record the OTA signal to my DVR 522 because it doesn't receive OTA signals. So, I would need pay to upgrade my DVR to keep the DVR functions for CBS station.

If I go with option 2. I will have the costs of switching to a new provider. Both upfront costs and possibly higher monthly fees.

Both options 1 and 2 will cost me a lot of money.

Who knows how long option 3 will take.

All of these options are not good for me the Dish Customer and all I'm offered by Dish Network is to get the crappy Hallmark programming for free. Or maybe $1 off my bill. I have no interest in the Hallmark station. And $1 off is not a fair deal either.

I think Dish Network is taking advantage of me.

 

[long_time_DNC]

Fisher is demanding an 82% increase from Dish and you think Dish is taking advantage of you??

No, Fisher Broadcasting is being utterly unreasonable, verging on the absurd. If Dish gave in to an 82% increase by one local broadcasting company, what do you think would happen? Yep, the rest of them would want an 82% (or more) rate increase.

Who do you think will ultimately pay for that kind of rate increase if Dish made a deal like with Fisher (and then every other local broadcasting company after that)? Yep, you, me and everyone else nationwide who gets their locals via Dish Network.

This is a fight Dish Network must win, otherwise, locals won't be anywhere close to $5.99 anymore. It's pretty easy math to do and it's an ugly picture if 82% * 4 of $5.99 is tacked onto our bills. I sure don't want to have to pay that for locals....do you?

 

[Cocophone]

I would feel better understanding the 82% increase if I knew the actual numbers involved and how they compare to what DirectTV and Comcast pay.

Maybe the increase is from 10 cents to 19 cents per subscriber.

Maybe the Dish Network pays less than 95% what DirectTV and Comcast pay currently.

Without facts like these there is now way to put the requested increase in to context.

 

[Slamminc11]

...Without facts like these there is now way to put the requested increase in to context.

Fact is that Dish has been able to come to agreements with pretty much every other Local channel that they had carriage agreement desputes with at the new year except for this one, so...
Either Dish caved to all the other local channels to get them back up but is balking on Fisher, or Fisher is being a whole lot more unreasonable that all the others...

 

[levibluewa]

My understanding of the dispute centers on DISH not paying Fisher for an agreed upon contract to carry KUNS (?) for the previous year. That's when the lawyers got involved and we all know once they do there's money to be made to drag it out

If that is the case, do you think DISH would turn your signals back on if you didn't bother to pay them for a years service?

I'm not a fan of affiliates, period. KOMO does happen to be one of the best. They have a close relationship with ABC and have always cleared about 99% of the networks offerings. Unlike SOME affiliates I know.

Boo to affiliates...turn 'em all off. NY & LA for network programming...just like FX, USA, TNT...affiliates are out-of-date and useless.

 

[david_jr]

Fact is that Dish has been able to come to agreements with pretty much every other Local channel that they had carriage agreement desputes with at the new year except for this one, so...
Either Dish caved to all the other local channels to get them back up but is balking on Fisher, or Fisher is being a whole lot more unreasonable that all the others...

DISH has failed to come to agreement with Freedom Communications (8 stations) and Newport Television (many stations) for LIL HD retransmission. Each has a station in Albany, NY (Freedom has 2 if you count CW) leaving Albany with only ABC & NBC in hi def on DISH. This has been going on since summer and seemingly no end in sight. They still carry the SD however. Don't know if the analog shutoff will affect this, but I hope so.

 

[Slamminc11]

DISH has failed to come to agreement with Freedom Communications (8 stations) and Newport Television (many stations) for LIL HD retransmission. Each has a station in Albany, NY (Freedom has 2 if you count CW) leaving Albany with only ABC & NBC in hi def on DISH. This has been going on since summer and seemingly no end in sight. They still carry the SD however. Don't know if the analog shutoff will affect this, but I hope so.

Did you miss the part in my post about "...carriage agreement desputes with at the new year..."

 

[Richard Winfeld]

DirecTV has been running lots of radio ads for the past month in my area now that Dish has dropped Fisher's KATU (ABC for Portland, OR). The ads feature a phony phone call to the "CIA" by an irate man complaining that Dish has removed the ABC affiliate from their service - he says, "Isn't that un-American?... no Ugly Betty!... no Desperate Housewives!!... no GOOD MORNING AMERICA!!!" The CIA guy finally agrees that it is, and then you get a pitch to switch to DirecTV.

(They made the ads before "Lost" returned - that would do it for me if I didn't have OTA.)

 

[david_jr]

Did you miss the part in my post about "...carriage agreement desputes with at the new year..."

Guess I misunderstood what you were getting at. Sorry. My point was just that DISH hasn't come to agreements with everyone. While I agree that Fishir is way unreasonable, apparently, they aren't the only one. To your point, most, apparently, are at least reasonable in their demands.

 

[DishSatUser]

Personally, I've yet to really notice that KOMO 4 is missing from my Seattle locals. Other than when browsing through the list and seeing the information loop about the dispute on the station, I've had little if any impact on my viewing enjoyment.

I've considered putting up an OTA antenna to suppliment my service, since the ViP 722 will record these for me as well, if a different station provider had a dispute but I'll likely procrastinate on this for a while.

Separately, for a while there I was also extremely frustrated and wondering if the early cancellation fee would be better than the signal service I'd been receiving. Ironically, due to the information on this forum, I'd thought it was related to the signal strength of the 129W sat from Washington and was waiting for the replacement sat to solve my problem. But the signal loss started to impact shows every 15 minutes or less.

I'd finally called, scheduled the tech to come out and fix it or take it away, and was pleasantly supprised to find out the 129 LNB had failed and there was numerous "LNB drift" in the logs on the ViP 722. After replacing that, fully revewing the cabling, peaking of signal and all that, I've now had no drops of service, except a couple times during the hard snows we'd had in January.

I've now egg all over my face with my spouse and kids as I'd kept stressing the "It's the failing 128W sat" when it was really the failing LNB.

Hopefully if others are suffering similarly, they've also checked rather than just "chalking it up to the sat and either wait for Ciel-2 or cancel" mentality that I'd suffered from.

 

[Shortfork]

I've got a "tech supervisor" coming on Monday AM to check if they can get the bugger working.. or take it out... maybe they will make it work. If they can, I should not have listened to the installer who told me it was the falling E5 at 129 that was the problem.. Nice kid but if he was wrong, I just endured 4 months of crappy signal and NO usable HD for nothing.....



Wayne Sagar

 

[Cocophone]

I would be happy if Dish would make me a deal on upgrading me to a 722k or equivalent so I could record OTA signal on to a DVR. I've had no luck getting them to do anything for me.

 

[levibluewa]

Wayne...

Its the "hunk-o-junk" 129 falling out of the sky. By the time the tech shows up the new 129 will probably be live and the end to our signal problems.

Noted CI is on this morning!

 

[Kumacho]

Fisher is demanding an 82% increase from Dish and you think Dish is taking advantage of you??

No, Fisher Broadcasting is being utterly unreasonable, verging on the absurd. If Dish gave in to an 82% increase by one local broadcasting company, what do you think would happen? Yep, the rest of them would want an 82% (or more) rate increase.

Who do you think will ultimately pay for that kind of rate increase if Dish made a deal like with Fisher (and then every other local broadcasting company after that)? Yep, you, me and everyone else nationwide who gets their locals via Dish Network.

This is a fight Dish Network must win, otherwise, locals won't be anywhere close to $5.99 anymore. It's pretty easy math to do and it's an ugly picture if 82% * 4 of $5.99 is tacked onto our bills. I sure don't want to have to pay that for locals....do you?

I find it hard to believe that Fisher is actually asking for an 82% increase. In the time period since Dish Network has dropped all Fisher programming, Fisher has negotiated carraige contracts with the following companies:

Comcast
Charter Communications
Cable one

Meanwhile the Dish Network has dropped numerous other local stations around the US in "Contract Disputes".

When reporters from the Tri-Cities Herald attempted to contact Dish Network they never received responses to their phone enquiries or emails. Meanwhile Fisher was quite forthcoming when they were asked about the dispute and firmly stated they were not asking for an 82% increase.

Because of all of these factors, I firmly belive that Dish Network is A) Lying to us about the increase B) Is being motivated by other factors that they refuse to make public.

If it turns out Dish Network is being dishonest with it's customers I hope they pay the price by losing a large number of them. I would leave them however, I am still looking at another year of contract with them.

 

[Cocophone]

I am out of contract with Dish and would really like to know how the rates that Fisher is requesting compare with what Dish pays other local stations. Also, what are the actual dollar amount per subscriber and how do these amounts compare to Direct TV and Comcast.

Without these facts, there is now way to know which party is playing "fair".

Fisher could be gouging Dish or Dish could be dishonest about the rate. There is simply know way to know.

However, as a subscriber to Dish I am not willing to wait an indeterminate amount of time for this to get resolved.

Other than this issue with Fisher, I have been a happy Dish customer.

 

[Laddyboy]

I am out of contract with Dish and would really like to know how the rates that Fisher is requesting compare with what Dish pays other local stations. Also, what are the actual dollar amount per subscriber and how do these amounts compare to Direct TV and Comcast.

Without these facts, there is now way to know which party is playing "fair".

Fisher could be gouging Dish or Dish could be dishonest about the rate. There is simply know way to know.

However, as a subscriber to Dish I am not willing to wait an indeterminate amount of time for this to get resolved.

Other than this issue with Fisher, I have been a happy Dish customer.

If they were willing to settle for what E* is paying the others in the same market, would there have been a disagreement in the first place? Probably not.

 

[Slamminc11]

...In the time period since Dish Network has dropped all Fisher programming, Fisher has negotiated carraige contracts with the following companies:

Comcast
Charter Communications
Cable one

Meanwhile the Dish Network has dropped numerous other local stations around the US in "Contract Disputes".
....

And in the same time period that Fisher has been down, Dish was able to come to terms with Free State Communications, Jackson Television, Lockwood, and Raycom Media, Inc. All with local channel dispute. Interesting that Dish was able to work out deals with them and Fisher is still not done. You can try and spin it however you want, but...