Could this be why you don't have locals?

[AkShark]

This was published in todays Anchorage Daily News.

Does Echostar really expect to get retransmission rights for Free?

http://www.adn.com/business/story/3077890p-3101208c.html



:shrug: :shrug: :shrug:

[Chaos]

Yes. In most areas, the cable company gets the right to retransmit free. Why shouldn't the satellite companies?

[MikeW]

What I don't understand about retrans is that the stations spend so much money putting a transmitter and antenna up to broadcast their signal to consumer for free. E* spends millions upgrading satellite technology to transmit these signals more efficently and charge consumers a fair price. Say a market has the "big four", wb, upn, pbs, and one spanish station. That's $6.00 per subscriber to divide by 7 stations and leave something left over to pay for the technology and, heaven forbid, make a profit. Why wouldn't these stations want to get their signal out to the masses with a technology they don't have to pay for?

[tampa8]

The agrument that they pay out money to produce their newscasts and want compensation for that is pretty rediculas. First, what of the many OTA people that do not pay anything to receive the broadcasts. Second, if your spending that money but rural people cannot get it or get it badly, what is the good if they are not seeing the ads? It's the advertising that the locals insist is important - it is why people usually cannot choose an out of market network. Third, if one or two networks are up on the bird, and your newscasts are so important, don't you want to be there too? Finally, I think if you are going to refuse to be carried at no cost to you, then you should have to give up the right to keep an out of market network station out.
This is just one of the many many things that really need to be changed about network carriage, transmission rights, etc..... (just an example - if your local station has the right to a particular program but decides not to run it (which happens) you are out of luck.

[Ken_F]

MikeW and tampa,

Locals service on Dish Network (and cable), DirecTV, and cable is a for-profit service. It's not like they are doing the network affiliates a service and delivering locals to customers for free; customers have to pay for the locals. I think it's only fair that if Dish, DirecTV, and cable are going to make money off locals service, the local channels themselves should get some small share of the pie.

As far as their rights, also note that broadcast television is only free because it uses the public airwaves. As far as distribution goes, once you start talking about private cable networks or satellites, the broadcast networks are no different than any other cable channel--which have just as many commercials as the networks. Of course, the networks aren't charging ESPN-like rates; the major networks typically receive only a nickel or so per local subscriber from cable, although it varies by market.

Cable and satellite customers are only able to retransmit commercial stations for free when the affiliates demand carriage under must carry. When an affiliate invokes must carry, it cannot receive any compensation by law. Given customers demand the networks, the ABC, CBS, FOX, and NBC affiliates almost never invoke their must carry rights--this means they have no legal right to carriage, but it also means that they are entitled to some compensation in return if cable or satellite wants to sell/deliver it to customers.

[Geronimo]

Cable companies have to negotiate retransmission rights too. And it can get quite nasty.

[Rick_EE]

Remember the big fight between timewarner and Disney? they were threatening to pulll our local ABC station.

[scooper]

"Threatening" to ?!? - they DID drop ours for a few days !

At the time, I simply put up a VCR tuned to our local ABC and put it on my MRDD1's 2nd channel - the rest of my locals were via cable and I had the Dish for "cable" channels.

[Jacob S]

I know of a WB station that just went up in a city in my state that is not going to broadcast over antenna, only available on cable is what the advertisement on the radio said. This is in Parkersburg, WV.

[jrbdmb]

One interesting line from the article: Last September, GCI began distributing Anchorage channels to smaller communities where it previously had been delivering signals from network affiliates in Lower 48 cities, including Denver and Seattle.Hmm ... so the local Alaskan cable company is allowed to broadcast "distant NETs" to subscribers. Have they been hauled into court yet? :bang