Distant Nets FINALLY Cut From My Programming After 3 Years

[Swampthing]

Well, I seem to have skirted by for nearly three years with both Los Angeles and New York locals (ABC, NBC, CBS, and FOX) on my programming lineup until this past Saturday morning. Got a call from Dish to say they are turning off my Distant Networks as we spoke, and offered to add my Washington, DC locals. Fortunately, at least NBC East and West was allowed to stay, but most of my timeshifting comes from watching ABC and CBS shows... So I took the DC locals and kept the NBC East and West in case of local pre-emptions.

Anyway, the sad part is that Dishplayer has a hard time navigating through the locals remapped to the 8000 channel section and often reboots. I told the CSR that this would be a problem and all they could say was "oh well... sounds like you have to get that repaired." :shrug:

So now I sit here and await the release of the 721 with it's two tuners and hope it will be the answer to my prayers... but then again we're talking about Dish here.

[Mike]

Have you tried waiver requests? Maybe you will get lucky and get one or a few?

[Swampthing]

I'm not exactly sure how I would go about requesting waivers for the west coast nets. It's not like I'm in their territory or anything.... Apart from that, the followup letter Dish sent me last week before calling this weekend claims that waivers were submitted on behalf of myself by Dish for the stations I had, but met with minimal success. Must be NBC that granted the waiver since I was allowed to keep them...

[Adam Richey]

Does anybody know if I'll be affected. I'm in the Indianapolis DMA, and I currently have Denver ABC and FOX. I don't think Denver was a city mentioned as staying on conus. Will I lose Denver networks?

[scooper]

At least ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX and KWGN(WB) in Denver will remain on CONUS beams and available to those who qualify (KWGN being a Superstation).

However, since Indianapolis is one of the cities that E* carries, don't be too surprised if you lose your Denver feeds.

[Just Jeff]

As of last night, I still had both East and West networks. I have had them since I started with DiSH back in '96.

Though it would suck losing them, it would probably be a mixed blessing. I'm thinking that such an action will be the impetus for me to search for a sweetheart New Subscriber deal on a DirecTivo system to replace my E* 5000 receiver/dinosaur.

[Mike]

You can request waivers thru Dish and/or DirecTV now. It's your local station that has to grant them. If they grant them then you can get the West Coast station of that affiliate. On Dish, you can choose between a few cities.

Never give up! Try lots of times! I lost the Phoenix and NY locals on Dish with the Miami ruling in 2000. I lost the NY locals on DirecTV when I moved back to So Cal from Phoenix in 1999. I had a newbie CSR when I called Dish in 1999 and was able to keep the Phoenix and NY locals on Dish for almost a year. :) Over the last year and a half, I've been requesting waivers with the LA stations on DirecTV. Even been in contact with the engineer at KNBC via e-mail. I got a waiver from KABC first on my 2nd try, then KCBS on my 5th try and just yesterday, WNBC was turned on for me after 7 times, so the waiver must of been approved. (Thanks, Brett) I try every few months with DirecTV. I just have to work on FOX exclusively next for WNYW.

On Dish Network, I get WABC and WCBS automatically without waivers I guess, so at the beginning of April I sent in requests for WNBC and WNYW, but haven't heard anything yet :) On Dish, I'll switch the WABC and WCBS feeds to other stations during the football season.

Never give up on trying! The worst they can do is say no. If you try enough then maybe the engineers will grant you a waiver?