US House panel advances satellite legislation

[Bill R]

US House panel advances satellite legislation:

http://www.forbes.com/business/services/newswire/2004/04/28/rtr1351365.html

"A U.S. House of Representatives panel on Wednesday approved a measure requiring EchoStar Communications Corp. and DirecTV Group Inc. to put local broadcast channels they offer on a single satellite dish instead of two dishes within a year".

[Jacob S]

This will probably slow down the additional local channels that they will offer due to them having to put some of the local channels that are currently on the wing slots to the core slots (105/110/119/121). Those that get locals at 110/119, how are they going to come up with enough room to put all those wing slot channels onto 110 or 119? Would they have to put up a SuperDish to get them if they had to put them on 105/121?

I thought DirecTv was going to put some locals at an orbital slot between 80 and 90 that would require a seperate dish? Guess that idea is a bust unless they can do it all with one dish? Would they then have to have two seperate ParaTodos dishlike solutions just as Dish has two SuperDish solutions (105/110/119 and 110/119/121)?

[amit5roy5]

What will be done w/ 148 then? I really want my western feeds, LOL! :)

[Jacob S]

Looks like Dish will have to find another reason to use the wing slots.

[jimisham]

Here's something that was in that bill that I didn't see in the article -
"Satellite companies would gain the ability, however, to broadcast certain "significantly viewed" channels from market areas that neighbor a subscriber."

[scooper]

Looks like Dish will have to find another reason to use the wing slots.


No problem - add additional Locals - only then, ALL the stations for a market will be on 148 / 61.5 / any other wing slots.

Another idea - add westcoast feeds of some of the major cable channels.

Or how about some more HDTV ?

[Slordak]

I think what this means is that markets which are currently split would have to be consolidated. And I think that realistically, for Dish Network, this means that they would have to be consolidated on the wings, since they are out of space on the core satellites and can't really afford to use up any more of their "everyone gets this satellite" slots with locals.

[Mike D-CO5]

I look for them to use the wing slots for the small locals since they won't be able to seperate the locals to 2 dishes anymore. So I guess there will be a lot of Dish 300s installed in the next year.