Uplink Activity Report - 1/14/2009 1:02am - 418 changes

[MikeD-C05]

It seems to me that we've speculated for a long time that E*'s plan was to have BOTH eastern and western arc options for many DMA's. There are many good reasons to do this:

• Many subs have a mixture of HD and SD recievers, and this gives them the option of keeping it that way, at least until E* goes all-MPEG4.
• Many subs have line-of-sight issues for one arc or the other.
• Many "eastern" subs were set up with 1000 or 1000.2 dishes before EA became available.
• Probably other reasons I can't think of right now.

I'm stumped as to why so many here are expressing surprise that their particular DMA will be on both "arcs."

Brad

I'm stumped because I thought there was a bandwith crunch and it didn't make sense to me to duplicate the same locals on different satellites when there are still local dmas that aren't uplinked on the sat for either sd or HD. This seems wasteful and redundant to me. But then again this is DISH who were talking about , who had international channels on 148/61.5/121/118. I would think that carrying all locals in the country would be more important, so that DISH could claim that they carry all the local dmas, where ever you live in the U.S. A. .

 

[kstuart]

At any rate, I didn't mean to give anyone the impression that I thought this was a permanant situation - only that it makes some sense right now.

Whenever possible, Dish gives the customers months and months and months to switch to the new setup, so any DMAs on one "arc" that are added to the other "arc" will be on both for months - unless there is some pressing need (such as that the spotbeam also covers a big market that has no HD locals uplinked).

 

[mike123abc]

I'm stumped because I thought there was a bandwith crunch and it didn't make sense to me to duplicate the same locals on different satellites when there are still local dmas that aren't uplinked on the sat for either sd or HD. This seems wasteful and redundant to me. But then again this is DISH who were talking about , who had international channels on 148/61.5/121/118. I would think that carrying all locals in the country would be more important, so that DISH could claim that they carry all the local dmas, where ever you live in the U.S. A. .

Dish has most DMAs, probably all the ones that it feels is profitable to carry. There is a lot of cost with locals, so the smallest DMAs are the hardest to break even on.

Since they are using spot beams for locals, it is not taking away from national programming. A large DMA where they can have 2 sets of locals probably covers more potential subs with line of site issues than would subscribe in the smallest DMAs, so Dish probably figures they get more customers duplicating. The uplink costs for Dish for duplication is probably very small since they already have the fiber from the DMA to the uplink center, already have it encoded, just uplink it 2x.

 

[Stargazer]

Maybe they should offer the smaller local markets to be on the satellite if they do not charge them anything for carriage. Perhaps it is not even profitable enough for them to do it even if they didnt have to pay for the stations. If some of the stations in a local market ask for carriage and they do not offer that market, then does Dish/Direct have to start uplinking those stations?

 

[Fitzie]

Maybe they should offer the smaller local markets to be on the satellite if they do not charge them anything for carriage. Perhaps it is not even profitable enough for them to do it even if they didnt have to pay for the stations. If some of the stations in a local market ask for carriage and they do not offer that market, then does Dish/Direct have to start uplinking those stations?

It's been a while since I reviewed the actual wording, but I am not aware of anything in the statutes which would require that. There are probably stations in several small DMAs which would love to have Dish (or D*) carry their programming free of charge simply as a way of expanding their viable service area. This situation changes, of course, when Dish carries even one station in a DMA; other stations in that DMA would then have a right of carriage by Dish of their primary signal. (Carriage of secondary signals is not required.)

 

[Barry Erick]

This is interesting. They removed the EA SD versions of the two HD channels they added today. I suppose this makes sense since all ViP receivers can downconvert HD, but it'll result in larger recordings for people who just wanted to record SD. Is this the first time they've used this strategy? Do they actually do EA installs for people who only want SD, or do you have to subscribe to HD?

They do this all the time. When WNEP was added they did it to them.

 

[JohnH]

Maybe they should offer the smaller local markets to be on the satellite if they do not charge them anything for carriage. Perhaps it is not even profitable enough for them to do it even if they didnt have to pay for the stations. If some of the stations in a local market ask for carriage and they do not offer that market, then does Dish/Direct have to start uplinking those stations?

There is no requirement for them to carry any market. The requirement kicks in when they decide to carry one channel from a maket. Then "Must Carry" would apply and any full-power station in that market which elects "Must Carry" must be carried when they supply a "good" signal to the provider. There are specific dates which apply to the "Must Carry" elections.