OTA Guide data replaced with 'Important News - Press Info'

[Hall]

Huh ?

 

[bebop]

You are right. The rep was incorrect in what they told you. ALL that Dish gets from the OTA antenna (PSIP) is the station's call letters or some "code" that's in that data. Dish then copies the guide data they get from Tribune or whoever and maps it to the OTA channels.

Dish is the one doing this, regardless of what they tell you. They're doing this to cause an "inconvenience" to the viewer of this station in hopes that you contact the station to complain. I'm surprised they don't include the phone # and name of the general manager of the station....

The info message is strange indeed. As you can see above where I posted it, it first talks about the Local Provider refusing to provide the channel - but the phone number it does include is one for Dish Network to explain a short bit about what's going on. I'm surprised too.

The only party involved that could even be the one writing this message is Dish - but they keep denying that they are doing it (or at least their employees have been instructed to say that they copy the guide info exactly and provide it in the guide.

My guess is that they can't/won't change the setup to allow for a different description for the OTA local and the Dish provided local. They just copy the info to both channels even though there is programming on the OTA version. I don't mind the Info message on the Dish provided local - but come on - why over-write perfectly good info with this annoying message?

 

[bebop]

Here's the latest in the info from Dish (things are getting worse it appears). I don't believe all that they are saying here, since it is not temporary but has been going on for months. At least they gave an answer this time instead of avoiding the issue.

--

Dear Mr. bebop,​

I do apologize for all of your trouble. Well, the answer to this one won’t make you happy. You should actually be seeing “important info” all the time, but a glitch caused some of the old information to appear in the guide temporarily. I don’t expect information on that channel to be restored until the contract dispute is settled and the channel returns, if that ever happens. I am sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused.​

EchoStar Broadcasting Corporation
Quality Assurance Department
dishquality@echostar.com​