Network waiver requirements

[Fritter]

I have a question for Directvrep. I am afraid this is a most confusing situation. At the beginning of this baseball season I was told I would need to subscribe to the Extra Innings package in order to watch the Kansas City Royals based on my zip code (72601- Arkansas). I told the DirecTv CSR that was strange, because in the past my zip had always been in market for the Royals and I had gotten the games on Fox Midwest by adding the Sports Package. The CSR assured me that the situation had changed and that I would get all Royal games on EI because I was now "out of market".

I subscribed to EI, and the CSR was right, I was getting all the Royals games. Then in late April ( in the middle of a game I was watching) the screen went black. Since then, I have been blacked out of all EI showings of the Royals. So I assumed DirecTV had made a mistake and I would get the games as an "in market" location on Fox Midwest. However the games are blacked out there as well.

Basically, we are getting blacked out both in market and out of market here in Arkansas for KC Royals baseball. There is no way to watch the team here in the state. Just about every other place in the US can access the team through either the Sports Pack or Extra Inning pacakge.

I have contacted the Royals, Fox Midwest, MLB, and DirecTV about this and have really not gotten a good explanation as to why I am not allowed to watch the Royals on TV (not that anybody would want to, as bad as they are )

Thanks in advance. I hope this is not too confusing.....

 

[TheForce]

directvrep-

Thanks much for your reply. Everything you said was what I expected. I just was not quite sure of the procedure for a station change.

I had applied for and was denied a waiver from our local CBS affiliate 2 years ago. Even though I maintain an excellent relationship with all our stations, or at least try to, it did me no good as station policy was cold and fixed as denial of all waiver requests. I was no different. Until the station owership decided to give up their CBS affiliate to a small Clear Channel UPN station. The original station was already HDTV ready but the new one would be 6 months without HDTV. The chief engineer of the original station called me on the phone and said, "I know you would like that waiver so I am having our people set you up. Have your dbs provider contact us before the end of the month and we will grant it. Have any of your friends contact us too." Since they were losing the CBS affiliation, they didn't care. Long story short I received the waiver for DishNetwork in about a week. When the new station took over at the end of the month I expected the waiver to be reversed but the new station didn't process it so I have had both every since. It was a unique opportunity most people will never have. In addition, since DishNetwork continues to have CBS HD on 61.5, I decided to drop the dish and use it for VOOM. I still have the CBS HD channel on my account but don't really watch it since logictically, watching CBS on OTA antenna is better now. Since the channel only costs, $1.50 a month I decided to just keep it on my account.
My only reason for asking about the transfer of that waiver was to move most of my programming package from Dish to DirecTV. I have a small amount of programming now and the HDTIVO so it would be to my advantage to switch my main programming over.

Overall, I am of the belief that waiver process and sports blackouts remain the most inconsistent and unfair practice in TV broadcasting. Well rates for advertising, too but that is another story. What it all means is that much can be done with waiver granting if you really want it. Most people, I think, give up too easy or think it is not worth them spending a little money for success.

Fritter-
The blackout problem is also strange-
Just last weekend, I see VOOM and DishNetwork blacked out the Tampabay DR baseball game here in Jacksonville. BUT, DirecTV did not. Go figure! How fair is that? Last NFL ST season had blackouts applied to FOX but not CBS HD. How fair is that? Jacksonville is the home of the Superbowl this season. To get that we had to add a whole new seat section which raises the seat population for all games. Last couple of years we had problems selling out so the games were blacked out, further exacerbating the team support issue. Wayne Weaver, owner of our Team just announced that he would change the seating population of the stadium for the regular season by covering up the seats and removing them from sale. This is how easy it was for him to circumvent the blackout rules. He plans to uncover the seats for any playoff games, superbowl, and all non NFL games that fill up easily like the Fl-Ga game. If circumventing blackout is that easy, why don't other team owners do the same? I suspect that now that Weaver did this and is getting away with it, others will too. Kiss blackout goodbye!

 

[Fritter]

Don, from what I have learned about my situation, it seems that the Royals made a deal with Fox Midwest last summer to carry the Royals new network (RSTN) on satellite. Evedently, the deal struck between the two did not include the states of Arkansas, Oklahoma, and parts of Iowa, all parts of the 'so-called' Royals television territory.

So in my case it would seem the Royals are partly (maybe totally) to blame for us not getting to watch them. They refuse to no longer claim us as their territory so we could get the games on Extra Innings, but can not provide the state with their own home network coverage either.....

If I lived in 47 of the 50 United States I could have access to Royals baseball on TV. I happen to live in one of the three that can't, even though they are classified as "KC Royals Television Territory"!

What a joke......