must carry question

I live about 5 hours away from Portland, OR but that's the stations we get over the air and from E*. Over the air, there are translators for ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC and UPN. My question is since the Portland WB doesn't have any nearby translators, will we get the Portland WB feed in January when must carry kicks in?

Basically yes! All customers who already have locals provided by E* in their cities will get the WB except for Indianapolis and Orlando.

The way that I understand it is whatever WB station serves the Portland area will be added to the Portland locals. If you are subscribed to the Portland locals, then you should get it regardless of where you live and regardless of where the WB translator is located for OTA.

So E* and D* use the same DMA for all the locals in a market?

For example, isn't all of Utah in the Salt Lake DMA? So an independent station with a single transmitter in Salt Lake will get its signal sent to all DBS subs in Utah who buy locals?

As long as the stations are licensed full power and within the DMA they can get carried on Dish. There are duplication issues in few cases, but most cases a station like an independent (which usually doesnt duplicate) can get on if they send a "quality" signal.

WWAC 53 has one of the smallest grade B contours. They are licensed for Atlantic City and service Atlantic City with a grade A signal as they have to. However, they can get mustcarry for the whole Philly DMA even though their signal they transmit from Atlantic City area only covers less than 5% of the population in the Philly DMA, and less than 5% of the land area of the Philly DMA.

What they'd do is send a fiber optic feed to the Philly POP in Philly to get the "quality" signal.

Fascinating, so out west lots of stations are going to increase their coverage area without having to install a bunch of linked repeaters.

I guess small, sparsely populated towns won't be getting any updated translators anymore!