New Locals For Dish?

[stugil]

Now that Directv is going to add 50 new locals by the end of the year, what's Dish going to do. I thought dish was maybe going to announce 6 new markets at the CES show? even if they announce 6 it still is'nt 50. I still hope Hartford /New Haven Connecticut will be one of them.:(

[JBKing]

Funny, Charlie says around 80 locals was the max without a merger. Then last chat he says 52 or so as the max, since there was no merger.

What's Dish going to do?....

....raise your rates.

Charlie has a potential disaster on his hands. With D* at 100 locals, him at 52. Add a lot of po'd DishPlayer owners being asked to pay $10 a month in June. Add in a $2 increase. Compare AT100 w/locals to TC+ with locals. Looks like a lot of bad decisions on E*'s part recently.

[shilton]

Originally posted by stugil
Now that Directv is going to add 50 new locals by the end of the year, what's Dish going to do. I thought dish was maybe going to announce 6 new markets at the CES show? even if they announce 6 it still is'nt 50. I still hope Hartford /New Haven Connecticut will be one of them.:(

Do you know which 50 new locals D* is adding???

[Steve Mehs]

A few are listed here

http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=11148

[jeffwtux]

I wouldn't be worried about the locals. Just because D* chose to make the announcement of 50 mor cities by the end of the year(It's JANUARY), doesn't mean Charlie's not doing anything. The last number he said was 80 total. Both are goals and neither might be met.

[JBKing]

No, the last number Charlie said was around 52, on the last chat.

Wonder which number we should believe? :confused:

[jerryez]

I remember on the last chat, Charlie said they could add about 30 more locals and they were at 48 at the time. That is a lot more than 52. He said that they would add three or more by the end of year and he exceeded that. They are at 54 now. See:

http://www.dishnetwork.com/content/programming/locals/index.shtml

Count them!

[Mike123abc]

In the merger filings with the FCC Dish said without merger they would do about 80 markets and Direct said they would do about 100 markets.

[JBKing]

What chat was it that Charlie said we had 49 (maybe 50) and we had room for maybe 2 or 3 more markets and that was it. Maybe not last chat but it wasn't that long ago.

Someone tell me I didn't dream that.

[TNGTony]

JB...he said they would add 2 or 3 more locals by the end of the year. He did not say that was it for locals. He beat his estimate by 1. 4 Cities were added from the time of the chat to the end of the year.

BTW still in the works right now is Anchorage (stations want more money and other stuff Dish isn't willing to give), Omaha and a couple of spots haven't even been lit! The south-east is getting two, maybe three more cities. The west coast is getting about 5 more cities. East Texas, Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi are due a couple, maybe three.

Plenty of room. It's now a time for logistics and for wrangling agreements out with TV stations.

See ya
Tony

[Darkman]

Tony - "Omaha haven't been lit"? - i thought Omaha was reported to be available for "non-mere mortals"? :)

[TNGTony]

Darkman,

No. Omaha is not yet available to mere mortals. :-) It is rumored to be coming next week (1/16). But I've only heard it from one source. The source is generally correct, but when a local city is coming I usually hear it from 2 or 3 different sources. So I'm not sure.

See ya
Tony

[Darkman]

Ya..i understand all this - but isn't Omaha "Lit" though - if it is available to any1 (be that Mere Mortals, or Non-Mere Mortals)?

That is all i ment :) - Above you sounded like Omaha locals "haven't even been lit" (But i guess - maybe i misunderstood you cuz of the way you put it, and cuz of my poor language skills) :)

[Mike123abc]

It takes a lot of work to add locals beyond just the agreement with the stations:

1. Have to secure a building
2. Have to set up reception: Antennas, fiber lines or microwave to some stations
3. Put in the Dish compression hardware/computers/UPS
4. Get a fibre connection back to Dish uplink site
5. Get equipment in place to recieve at Dish uplink site
6. Get sat mux hardware to bundle the stations with others for satellite uplink

Probably a 1-2 month process after the reception site building is secured. How many engineers do they have flying around setting up equipment? I bet dish and direct would be hard pressed to add 30 markets in 2003 just from the setup time it takes. I admit if they feel lucky they can secure the site in advance and set up equipment to help speed it along while negotiating.

[nuts4scuba]

My wife pointed out last weekend a big dish on top of a building in Lexington, Ky with the Echostar logo on it.  A E* dealer had told me that they were supposed to start transmitting Lexington locals, but didn't know timeframe.

[jch464]

spoke with station mgr at wkyt in Lexington. He indicated that E* is being worked out in the Lexington market and E* has indicated to them that they should be available toward the end of the 1st quarter.

[Marcus S]

Charlie was also quoted once that past the top 100 E* would actually loose money, obviously their are a few unserved rural cities that break this rule. I certainly hope *D is not just trying to add cities to be adding them without consideration of potential sub base.