Murdock/DirecTV to talk to Dish about sharing capacity for LIL

[RAD]

Gee, what an original idea, wasn't that one of the reasonse for the merger that Charlie wanted?



Murdoch to seek cost sharing with EchoStar
Thu May 8, 2003 12:56 PM ET
WASHINGTON, May 8 (Reuters) - Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corp. NCP.AX NWS.N media empire is seeking to buy satellite television service DirecTV, said on Thursday he would approach rival EchoStar Communications Corp. DISH.O to discuss sharing costs for satellite capacity needed to air local channels.

Link to complete story:

http://reuters.com/financeNewsArticle.jhtml?type=governmentFilingsNew s&storyID=2707026

[Scott Greczkowski]

Of course if this happened, someone would need to swap out some equipment or something as the Conditional Access security systems used by both companies are not compatable with each other.

It IS a very good idea though, and it also shows Rupert is kind of scared, I believe Charlie really surprised him with the recent 121 and 105 satellite announcements.

[platinum]

I don't think Rupert is scared, I think it looks like he wants to show the judiciary committee he wants to play fair.

[Greg Bimson]

Scott, the headline of the story says it all. Elimination of duplication of locals may in fact be the quickest way to get all 210 DMA's up.

No one is running scared. Everyone is looking at the bottom line. The question is if the technology is there to share the security.

[Ken_F]

This would be an excellent development. Hughes Management would never have done this, because they were stubbornly opposed to any sort of bandwidth or capacity sharing.

[Mark Holtz]

I wonder if this means that Dish and DirecTV can share POP facilities as well.

[dswallow]

It would be an ideal opportunity for both companies to introduce equipment supporting different modulation standards and perhaps potentially different (or at least with some window of upgradability in firmware) compression systems, too.

This is, unfortunately, a very long term thing, though. It wouldn't happen quickly, even if everyone was agreeable to doing it.

[Randy_B]

Charlie said he and Rupe, while they had battled each other, had a better personnal relationship than he ever had with DirecTV before. I think they can and will work together once Rupe gets DirecTV. It sounds like Rupe belives the same philosophy as Charlie, that cablecos are the real competition. Charlie could never have done this before because Eddie H. is/was a boob who viewed E* as his only competition and didn't care about good business because he was spending GMs money (not his own, like Charlie and Rupe are doing).

[sampatterson]

That would be a great gain for satellite, and maybe even give some hope to having HD locals carried on satellite.

But would Charlie do it? He has the bandwidth advantage now with all the recent satellite announcements and it might be in Dish's best interest to not do it.

[Richard King]

But would Charlie do it? He has the bandwidth advantage now with all the recent satellite announcements and it might be in Dish's best interest to not do it.Ah, but he would still have the advantage and would be able to use that advantage for programming other than locals. Look for more HDTV, more E/W feeds, more foreign programming, more shopping channels ;), etc.

Dish announced a while back (during merger mania) that they had produced a box that would work with either system at the same time. I suspect that this box might be used for the shared bandwidth in some cities.

[Jacob S]

I was going to mention this myself but I thought that Rupert would want to compete agressively against Dish and may not do it as a result, but then I read where Charlie says he gets along with Rupert better than with Hughes so maybe things would work out better this way. They would still compete but where they see the need to save money they both can help each other in this way and help the public as well.

Perhaps they should look at the future of HD and what this may mean for satellite and the only way they may be able to make it or compete the best against cable is to share the spectrum together.

[Jacob S]

Would it cost more to swap out the receivers to a new standard or more to launch new satellites? How long would it take to make all that new hardware? It looks like they are coming close to doing this without having to do this anyways but if they could do this they could save lots of money and have spectrum for other things such as HD locals in which they will need all the spectrum they can get for that, and for future broadband internet as well.

Why are they discussing sharing the spectrum just for locals and not all the other channels? If they do it for locals then they might as well do it on the others as well? Perhaps they could use the Dish standards for some DMA's and DirecTv's standard for other DMA's but that would cause more hardware.

[Lyle_JP]

Does this mean E* will go to 640x480 resolution on locals, rather than the 480x480 which they use now?

[Ken_F]

Jacob,

No, they won't have to swap out receivers. Most modern receivers support the modulation and compression algorithms of both providers. Most recent models will simply need a software or firmware update--delivered by satellite. Dish and DirecTV will need to broadcast both forms of conditional access (CAS) for each channel, just as they had intended to do to support both DirecTV and Dish receivers with the merger.

[JohnL]

Originally posted by Ken_F
Jacob,

No, they won't have to swap out receivers. Most modern receivers support the modulation and compression algorithms of both providers. Most recent models will simply need a software or firmware update--delivered by satellite. Dish and DirecTV will need to broadcast both forms of conditional access (CAS) for each channel, just as they had intended to do to support both DirecTV and Dish receivers with the merger.

Ken,

This is not possible because the conditional access code is built right into each channels bitstream. Since both DirecTV and Dish have different CAM's then it would require each provider to broadcast two sets of Locals one with DirecTV and one with Dish's CAM seperately this dispells the notion of removing the duplication of channels on each provider so this arrangement would not allocate any more bandwidth to either provider for more locals.

The only way to make this happen would be for all DirecTV and Dish's receivers upgraded to do both DirecTV and Dish's Cam or do another common CAM for both providers for only Locals this would allow both providers to minimize Churn and be able to carry all 210 DMA's.

John

[Jacob S]

I believe some of the newer receivers do have both Conditional Access Systems in them but the older ones do not. It takes more than just a software upgrade, it has to do with the hardware as well. The smart cards would also have to be replaced.

[BobMurdoch]

Rupert is now going to be roasted the way Charlie was. (Just imagine all those Democrats that get to take a crack at him for killing the liberal media they liked so well.... Fox cleaned their clocks so well ratings wise that CNN and MSNBC were falling all over themselves to jerk their editorial content to the right or at least the center.) If Charlie has any brains he gets Rupert to sign some LONG term deals to lock up carriage for any FOX channels. This shows Uncle Sam that they will "play fair", and Charlie gets insured carriage of channels that Rupert could otherwise use to steal market share (Hell, even I'd bolt to D* if every FOX channel disappeared). Sign an agreement to share LIL capacity and both D* AND E* can use the excess capacity to add more HD channels (I won't even bother suggesting that they use it to improve PQ as neither side seems to give more than lip service to the topic)

[Jacob S]

I agree. Each of the providers are coming close to providing all of the markets on their own now, so its not just about getting all the markets up anymore, because they went their own ways to figure that out, its all about getting enough space for the future of HD on satellite.