If you could make the rules and policies what would you do?

[News Junky]

If you had the power to do so, what would be the rules concerning distant maket TV? No changes at all? Changes made to allow for DNS and if so under what conditions?

[jrwinter]

I would allow you to get channels from any city you want in the whole country!

[News Junky]

I would allow you to get channels from any city you want in the whole country!

Thanks for the love. How would you address the issues of fairness to the copyright holders and ecomonic ability of local TV stations to produce high quality local programming, if at all?

[Dax]

Thanks for the love. How would you address the issues of fairness to the copyright holders and ecomonic ability of local TV stations to produce high quality local programming, if at all?
What about fairness to the viewers? These stations do compete with each other on a local level with news, but I'm sick and tired of my local affiliates being monopolies with regards to their particular network.

If I want to watch a particular network program, there's only one place I can go, and only one time I can watch. And I can't tell you how many times I've had to view prime time programming - but never commercials - through weather maps, crawlers, school closing announcements and other local news interruptions. If there's one little county somewhere in the viewing area that's having a thunderstorm, we all have to suffer with weather maps all evening. If it's a big storm, we often don't get to see the program at all because the local meteorologists like to hear themselves talk. I realize they have a responsibility to public safety, but they take it to extremes. And if this storm information is so important, why is it taken off the screen during commercials?

In the winter it's even worse. Whenever there are weather related school closings, the program gets scrunched into one quarter of the screen, another quarter shows the local station ID and school closings are run across the bottom half. Now this is hardly emergency information and something that should be saved for news time. Maybe more people would tune into the news, if they had to go there for school closings. Besides, there are numerous other sources where parents and students can get that information.

Then there are the times when they interrupt, ten minutes before news time, to spend five minutes telling us about some local "late breaking" news story. Then there's the big crawler announcing local sports scores during playoffs. And let's not forget those times when they preempt a network program entirely for some locally produced show. If we're lucky, they might show the network program at 2:00 in the morning.

Despite the fact that they get numerous complaints about these things, it falls on deaf ears because they know they can get away with it. After all, the viewers have no choice.

All I'm saying is that the consumer should have an alternative source for network programming. This is America! If I'm willing to pay for it, I shouldn't be denied that choice.

Perhaps it could be a requirement that we have to subscribe to local channels, if available, before subscribing to distant networks. Most people are going to want to watch their local news anyway, and that's where local affiliates really compete.

Anyway, that's my rant for the day. I'll get off my soapbox now.

[BobaBird]

Tell me more of this "high quality local programming" of which you speak. Sounds fascinating! :D

I support the suggestion others have made to allow the viewer to select as many distant stations as the provider is willing to offer as long as they first subscribe to their locals. It may have to be an additional fee since stations that opted for must carry currently get nothing and those that negotiated retransmission consent only grant the right to be carried locally, not the right to give the viewer another option. If there is a "local market compensation" fee I suppose it wouldn't actually be necessary to require a LIL sub and it would offer a way for viewers in markets not carried by DBS to get DNS.

The LMC fee would be assessed against Grade A viewers. I don't accept that Grade B areas are properly served by OTA as I have been is supposed Grade A areas that have a marginal signal. Grade B and white zone viewers will be able to subscribe to DNS without paying the LMC fee. If the broadcasters want to claim the eyeballs, and therefore the fees, they need to do what is necessary to increase their Grade A coverage of the territories they have been granted.

Market size is a complicating factor. Small markets that are missing major networks (ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC) and netlets (UPN, WB) should have a reduced LMC fee. But what about large markets that carry smaller networks (Daystar, TeleMundo)? Are independents actually losing eyeballs since they supposedly carry more local content, or are they really just carriers of syndicated programming that can be seen on the distant stations instead?

So would this LMC be a flat fee the way LIL is now priced, is it based on the number and or type of station, or something more complicated like (total revenue of eligible stations) / (# viewers in the market) which would be doled out proportionately?

I'm leaving syndicators out of this as it makes my head hurt and could cause the whole thing to unravel. How do you address importing a program for which no one has the local rights and is that even a problem? How about programs that are not supposed to be seen in your area (sports blackouts come to mind)?

[BobaBird]

What about fairness to the viewers? ... All I'm saying is that the consumer should have an alternative source for network programming. This is America! If I'm willing to pay for it, I shouldn't be denied that choice.You're thinking like a consumer :sure: . In the current model the viewer is not a consumer, he is an asset. The only customer relationship that matters is the one between the advertisers and the station or the affiliate and the network.

I too like to think of myself as a consumer with the right to choose where I get my programming, and I don't mean the right to move to the next county or across the country :nono: . Since I as a viewer am not a party to the business arrangements that have been set up I don't feel bound by them.I'll get off my soapbox now.Stay on, you're doing good!

[greatwhitenorth]

In all this talk about consumer's freedom of choice, I think we may be a bit short sighted here. Say for example, we allow anyone to pick whatever station they would like. Obviously, more people would gravitate toward the larger market stations because of superior talent (Jillian Barberie, anyone?) or superior production values. What would then happen would be smaller markets going dark, and an unhealthy concentration of viewers with just a few stations. We've already seen this in "local" radio, where every Clear Channel or Cumulus station across the country sounds the same. As a free market proponent, I see the gist of these threads, but radio deregulation was a massive failure, and I'd to see a similar situation arise again.

[MikeSoltis]

What of those folks who don't get this or that network in HD?
I am all for anyone can get any channel, but I can see it leading to the small market stations demise.

[News Junky]

Best: Everyone allowed to subscribe to all channels within satellite signal range regardless of market. Viewers must first have satellite access to stations in their market as a prerequisite to subscribe to same network out of market stations. A portion of their subscription premium will be paid to the local network affiliate to compensate them for loss of exclusive network household or a direct annual payment to the affiliate in exchange for an out of market network waiver. This fee should be the equivalent of what each household in the market represents in annual gross revenue.


Accecptable: A package offered similar to the NFL Sunday Ticket but for local newscasts where satellite services offer locally produced programming only from all network affiliates within a subscriber’s satellite signal range. Network programming would continued to be blocked but local programming such as news and public affairs programming would be allowed through using on/off scheduled access similar to what is used for pay-per-view movies and the NFL Sunday Ticket to control locally embargoed games.

[DicknVal]

This is Pie-in-the-Sky, right? What I'd like to see is:

1. Get all of the CONUS birds for a provider in the same orbital location. No more multiple lines of sight and kludged up "super dishes."

2. Put all of the nets on spot beams.

3. Open 'er up so that if you're in the spot you can watch the programming.

4. Carry, nationwide, regional 24 hour a day news networks, like Northwest Cable News (a coalition of stations from Seattle, Portland, Spokane, Boise, Eugene, Missoula, etc.). Then everybody could get the news from "home."

Of course it ain't gonna happen, but it would be nice.

Dick

[ebaltz]

I would ban local networks. Disband them immediately, they are of waste of time, space and resources and provide nothing of value. It would be national network feeds available to everyone on an a la carte basis through the provider of their choice.

[News Junky]

Of course it ain't gonna happen, but it would be nice.

Don't be so cynical. All the powers that be need is some indication that this wouls be a win-win for everybody and a money maker. Who would have ever thought NFL Sunday Ticket would happen as anal as the NFL is about blackouts and control freaktion but it happened. Football, as popular as it is, cannot compare to the popularity to local news if you add up all the stations nationally 3 times a day per station, 7 days a week. Plus, its cheap compared to the money that surrounds the NFL. Local stations already pay a nice chunk of change to put their local news on the Internet in the form of text and video streaming. Just imagine how they'd feel if they could be the one's getting paid instead of the other way around. Almost everything is already set up to offer at least distant market local news

[N5XZS]

I think if you are in the right spotbeams then you should have the right to get out of town TV stations.

For example I am in Albuquerque TV market and Albuquerque DMA shares the spot beam with Denver,Colorado Spring,El Paso,Tucson and Phoenix.

Now if you want to get your next door TV market just pay your local channels which is Albuquerque then YOU can order your next door out of town TV stations in a same spot beam.

As for the rest of other TV markets around the country they use 27/7 out of town local news channel. "Where are you Gannet?" :confused:

What happen to Gannet, they were thinking about starting up a out of town local news channel?

[BobaBird]

1. Get all of the CONUS birds for a provider in the same orbital location. No more multiple lines of sight and kludged up "super dishes."Some slots already have more than one satellite (61.5, 110, 148 from Dish) but they can only use 32 transponders between them. I don't know if the limitation is technological or by international agreement. Using spot beams provides a way to multiply the effective number of transponders by using the same transponder frequency to send different programming into different regions.

Assuming, of course, that we allow LIL to continue in our make-up ideal world. :) What would then happen would be smaller markets going dark, and an unhealthy concentration of viewers with just a few stations.Do the smaller markets, or even the larger markets, have enough local content to support having multiple stations? Would we end up paying compensation fees to something that exists only on paper? :lol: I think the actual consequene that we haven't allowed for would be the loss of free TV. :confused:

[Guesst925XTU]

I would make it so that:

-You get every TV station in your DMA
PLUS
-Every TV station that puts a Grade B or better signal into your community
PLUS
-Any other broadcast channel carried by cable

I would not allow DNS at all.

[Maphisto's Sidekick]

Best case: DBS allowed to deliver any out-of-market locals, perhaps surcharged to compensate local for loss of potential ad revenue. No obligation for DBS operators to carry stations on CONUS beams.

More realistic:


DBS and cable operators allowed to deliver any station for which a subscriber is in the Class B contour.
Cable allowed to offer any broadcast station it can receive OTA at its headend.
DBS may offer any local that is available to a subscriber via cable.
Cable may offer any local that is available to a subscriber via DBS, and DBS cannot refuse requests from cable operators who need the DBS signal to get a good signal for a local.
DBS and cable operators allowed to deliver all in-market stations.
If a network affiliate is not available under any of the above rules, DBS or cable operator allowed to deliver the closest out-of-market affiliate, or to offer their own in-house affiliate.
DBS and cable operators may carry any other out-of-market station for which the local network affiliate has granted waiver of exclusivity. (E.g., an east coast CBS O&O might permit D*/E* to provide a west-coast CBS O&O for time-shifting.)
All of the above apply only in markets where LiL service is being provided. If operator isn't offering LiL in a given market, the operator may provide out-of-market affiliates under the above rules, but must compensate the local affiliate for the lost potential ad revenue.
DNS sadly becomes moot/irrelevant.
Expand all of the above to include permission for retransmission of broadcast radio under similar guidelines. (Yes, I prefer XM and Sirius to broadcast radio, but sometimes not being able to get decent reception of an NPR affiliate or an AM station due to location/interference sucks.)

Sorta related:


One-dish rule applies only for in-market stations, and applies separately for analog and digital.
To promote adoption of Digital vs. Analog, DBS/cable may offer solely digital (downconverted for analog receivers, if necessary) rather than being hit with LiL rules separately for Analog and Digital.
To promote efficient use of orbital slots and expansion of HD-LiL service, permit (require?) DBS operators to collaborate in a way not normally permitted under antitrust, by using common birds/signal/uplink facilities in providing locals, at least/especially for small markets.
If all three prior points adopted, then after a reasonable time, require DBS operators to provide LiL service into all CONUS markets.
To promote recovery of frequency spectrum, allow broadcast stations to opt to be carried solely via cable & DBS, if they surrender their frequencies, but without sacrificing/waiving the semi-exclusivity privileges they would have had as a continuing broadcast station.

[kenglish]

Make it ALL Pay-TV. Won't matter where you get programming from.....the man gets his money. No commercials. Just pay as much as it takes them to make and deliver the programming.

I think about $5,000 a year wouldn't be a bad price to pay for TV (per receiver).

[ebaltz]

Why do we try to protect locals? Just do away with them. Its just subsidized crap.

[News Junky]

I would not allow DNS at all.

Why? Just curious. I can almost understand those with vested interests they think they are protecting such as a local TV station owner who likes being able to cancel network programing at will for paid telethons and the audience has no other access to the network programs his station carries. I assume maybe wrongly you aren't a station owner.

No commercials. Just pay as much as it takes them to make and deliver the programming.

I think about $5,000 a year wouldn't be a bad price to pay for TV (per receiver).

Are you really serious? LOL. Do you honestly think it costs $5,000.00 per year per receiver for the TV industry to operate and make the same profit they currently make?

Let make up a hypothetical city of 1 million households. Memphis is actually close to that so lets use Memphis. Each household has 2.5 receivers (estimated guess). There are 7 TV stations in Memphis.

1,000,000 x 2.5 x $5,000.00 ÷ 7 = $1,785,714,285.71. So, you're saying to modify the current system each TV station in a medium sized city should be directly compensated to the tune of one and three quarters of a billion dolallars each?

I'm not trying to ridicule you but when you throw out insane numbers like that (another poster made a far more outlandish cost estimate) it could give people the false notion that making modifications to the current system is just too cost prohibitive so give it up. Your estimate is totally off the charts but I've seen worse here.

BTW: The GROSS revenue (not net) the average TV station in a market that size sees per household is about 12 million per year. Using your model: Each local network affiliate makes about a dollar per month per household or 12 bucks a year x 7 stations (lets go ahead and give the PBS and indies an equal amount just because). Thats only $84.00 a year per household.

[Greg Bimson]

BTW: The GROSS revenue (not net) the average TV station in a market that size sees per household is about 12 million per year.I've stayed out of this thread, but am considering joining it. You'll all be surprised...

News Junky, where did you get your figures? Gross on average of $12 million per year doesn't sound right...

[News Junky]

I asked a broadcast engineer friend of mine what is the ballpark gross revenue of a network affiliate in a city of about 1 million people. He built what is now the CBS affiliate in my city and worked as its cheif engineer for years. He now oversees national radio broadcasts for one of the country's most popular sports leagues. He could be wrong but I know him well enough to know he wouldn't throw out a figure like $36,000.00 per household per month just to discourage me as if I'm stupid. I will confess my initial relatively educated guess put it at about 5 times that much. In any event if I were a betting man I'd wager its closer to $1 a month plus a few dollars margin of error per household than $36k per month per houshold.

I'm on the phone with him now and he said there's an organization called "BIA" where some of these figures might possibly be verified. Of course, we're talking about a city the size of Memphis, not New York or Washington. "Some big city station (with bigger populations) will bill 10 to 20 million a month but those stations have 10 times the audience. [He] stands by his estimate on a city of that size. It all boils to 'ratings points per share' and 'cost per point'. " If you give higher numbers I'm sure it will mostly reflect larger markets but also possibly more affluent regions. Hartford for example will understandably be a richer media market than Birmigham.

[SamC]

In most parts of the country, the only really local thing on local TV is the news. And if you add all of the news stations' ratings up, its about 1/4th of people that watch it. The rest, the large majority, could not care less if their CBS comes from the local monopolist, or comes to them the same way that ESPN, TNT, and OLN, come to them, via a single national cable/dish cast.

Likewise, the "poor" who "can't afford cable" are pretty much a myth. The 15% of the population w/o cable are not the poorest 15%, but rather people who have made a value judgement about TV.

So the real solution is that local stations, as a method of delivery of network TV, should be eliminated, and TV allowed to evolve like AM did.

That isn't going to happen.

Neither is a system where "you get whatever channel you want".

So I would say this:

- DBS can, and must, carry whatever channels the local cable carries.

- DBS can, and must, carry whatever channels claim a Grade B over a location.

- In situations where people are in a DMA where 80% of the population is in another state, DBS can offer a news carrying station from their own state. For example, people in the eight counties of eastern West Virginia that get DC TV should be offered a station from WV that carries WV news and sports, if they want it.

- Anytime that a local station deviates from the network schedule, the DBS provide automatically "un blacks out" the NY or LA feed of that station. For example, if a local station replaces a network show w/ Billy Graham (not to pick on Dr. Graham, who seems like a good guy to me, just an example) then NY or LA comes on, automatically, until the local station resumes the network coverage.

- No station should be paid anything by anyone for the retransmission of their signals, which use the public airwaves.

- No must carry for any station that does not maintain a 0.5% rating for any significant day part (goodbye home shopping scams, multi-PBS duplicates, religious beg-o-thons, etc).

- Every person gets all networks, period. If your area doesn't have a right time, full time UPN, you get NY UPN, etc. NBC, CBS, Fox, ABC, PBS, WB, UPN, and i/Pax for everybody. And Spanish OTA networks for any market that has a significant Spanish population.

- Canadian/Mexican networks for any market where cable carries them, or anywhere where they can reasonabably be received OTA.

[jhamps10]

What about fairness to the viewers? These stations do compete with each other on a local level with news, but I'm sick and tired of my local affiliates being monopolies with regards to their particular network.

If I want to watch a particular network program, there's only one place I can go, and only one time I can watch. And I can't tell you how many times I've had to view prime time programming - but never commercials - through weather maps, crawlers, school closing announcements and other local news interruptions. If there's one little county somewhere in the viewing area that's having a thunderstorm, we all have to suffer with weather maps all evening. If it's a big storm, we often don't get to see the program at all because the local meteorologists like to hear themselves talk. I realize they have a responsibility to public safety, but they take it to extremes. And if this storm information is so important, why is it taken off the screen during commercials?

In the winter it's even worse. Whenever there are weather related school closings, the program gets scrunched into one quarter of the screen, another quarter shows the local station ID and school closings are run across the bottom half. Now this is hardly emergency information and something that should be saved for news time. Maybe more people would tune into the news, if they had to go there for school closings. Besides, there are numerous other sources where parents and students can get that information.

Then there are the times when they interrupt, ten minutes before news time, to spend five minutes telling us about some local "late breaking" news story. Then there's the big crawler announcing local sports scores during playoffs. And let's not forget those times when they preempt a network program entirely for some locally produced show. If we're lucky, they might show the network program at 2:00 in the morning.

Despite the fact that they get numerous complaints about these things, it falls on deaf ears because they know they can get away with it. After all, the viewers have no choice.

All I'm saying is that the consumer should have an alternative source for network programming. This is America! If I'm willing to pay for it, I shouldn't be denied that choice.

Perhaps it could be a requirement that we have to subscribe to local channels, if available, before subscribing to distant networks. Most people are going to want to watch their local news anyway, and that's where local affiliates really compete.

Anyway, that's my rant for the day. I'll get off my soapbox now.


Sounds like Newschannel 5 to me. I hate it when they show those maps ALL night when it's one county that's under a watch or a warning, that is unless that one county is mine. :lol: Plus breaking in with 10 minutes to go, I'm lucky with cable that we have 3 stations of NBC and CBS.

[kenglish]

I thought the $5000 a year figure was pretty outlandish....just like some of the comments about disbanding the networks and saying locals were all "subsidzed crap".

In a medium to large market, like SLC (in the top 30's DMA), a network affiliate with a real news department, needs to make nearly $1,000,000 a week to stay in business and make a decent profit. Figure there are 4 or 5 stations like it in the market (ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX) doing news. Add a couple of independents, a couple of PBS, a WB, UPN, PAX, some Spanish stations......all needing to make some money.

I don't have the figures in front of me, but I think it came down to about $400 per year per household (800,000+ homes in the SLC DMA), would make up for the advertising that supports the stations now.

Of course, this would only work out if all 800,000 homes paid in to the kitty. Losing potentially 1/3 to 1/2 of the audience to other stations would make advertising so unlucrative to the sponsors that it would be better to just print fliers or do billboards.

See, you're worth a lot of money to the local stations. They don't want to lose you.

[News Junky]

Very interesting. Thanks. I think most people who want distant market network stations (a relatively small group) would be willing to pay the $400.00 a year. I think thats high but reasonable. Its even more reasonable if one wanted only access to just the CBS DNS or just NBC and FOX. The fair thing would be to divide that $400.00. by the 4 network affiliates and pay the local affiliates $100.00 each for the Distant affiliate access they want. I'd jump on at least 1 or 2 network waivers today for $100 or $200 a year.

What are the numbers on people who subscribe to satellite anway in comparrison to cable and ota?

[FTA Michael]

In a medium to large market, like SLC (in the top 30's DMA), a network affiliate with a real news department, needs to make nearly $1,000,000 a week to stay in business and make a decent profit.I hope you have a source so we can stop arguing in a vacuum.

Me, I figure that a decent station might have 52 employees averaging $100,000/year in salary and benefits. Those round numbers add up to $100,000/week in labor expenses. Even if I double that payroll before adding in some utilities and occasional equipment costs, I'm still not getting close to the $1 million per week you mention.

That logic takes the marketwide TV subsidy requirement down to $100 per household, or less than $3 per month per network affiliate.

[News Junky]

I just noticed something, kenghish. Your own calculations factor in a total of 9 stations per market to divy up $400.00 a year each, If I'm understaning you correctly. That would mean $44 per station per year per station or $3.60 a month per station. I'll be more than happy to pay that to my 4 local affiliates to compensate them for losing me as an exclusive household for their network. That's way more than they deserve since I will still continue to watch them thus I would continue to have advertising value and our models act as if we no longer watch them at all. But to make it a better deal for them, here's the total amount of money plus some that I respresent Plus the $1.50 or whatever it is per out of town station to D* or E*. Who do I make the check payable to?

Another thread but some heads up: the TV industry is about to be flipped on its ear due to a new surveying methodology Neilsen is about to switch to. As it was explained to me the current system is very vague, inaccurate and generously adds numbers to the stations that are not justified. I could be wrong but I think the current system counts everyone in the room as a viewer while mom is not really paying attention to the game, for example. The new system is expexted to be far more accurate and post fewer audience estimates that what is currently being published. I'd be curious to see if local TV will be affected and if so how and what will be the dominoe affect? Who knows, they might actually see the value in out of market paid waivers to share their local population with same network affiliates from other cities via satellite.

[kenglish]

Be sure to get all of your neighbors to chip in.....like I said, it would be all-or-nothing. Having only some viewers paying and some viewers watching makes the local advertising worthless to the ad buyers :) .

[kenglish]

BTW, News Junky,
I see your bio says, "As a kid I always wanted a satellite system so I could watch TV from anywhere in the world and to experience the feeling of being in cities all over the world. Now that I'm an adult I'm learning I better start travelling if I want to see the world."

Have you ever looked in to FTA satellite? You can travel a million miles between the time you get home and the time you go to bed. It's great!

[News Junky]

Not sure what FTA is. I'm in a covenenant restricted community so if its one of those big dishes I'm out of luck.

My hope is local TV and the satellite services will stort to see there's a market for people who requested all those waivers and maybe offer distant market locals on a schedule. If not the Internet is growing by leaps and bounds I'm hoping mp5, 6 are 7 will make their debut. Coupled with advances in faster and broader broadband at the consumer level and before long we might have access to way more content online. With some cabling, just connect your PC to the TV set . Local TV is already doing as much as they can to offer exactly what I've been advocating on the Internet but are limited due to bandwidth restrictions.

[FTA Michael]

Not sure what FTA is. I'm in a covenenant restricted community so if its one of those big dishes I'm out of luck.FTA is generally considered to be the DVB digital satellite TV broadcasts that are available without descrambling. Those big dishes are C-band, and they're cool, but you're out of luck. Thanks to the FCC, the community can't block you from erecting a smaller Ku-band dish (up to one meter wide), and you can use that to get a lot of FTA programming.

For a starting point to learn about it, I recommend Global Communication's excellent FTA section. http://www.global-cm.net/mpeg2central.html To summarize, on Ku band there are currently 3 ABC affiliates, 3 Foxes, 1 NBC, no CBS, a bunch of UPNs and WBs, and a few stations with an interesting TV-Landish oldies network. And dozens (hundreds?) of international channels, wild news and sports feeds, a fair number of religious channels, radio stations, and more.

From a news junky perspective, I count three FTA stations with locally produced news shows plus the Ohio News Network. But with a bit of persistence and luck you can be treated to sights like the reporter I watched saying, "Okay, I'll do a bobblehead now," while prerecording segments where he nods to agree with local news anchors. :lol: Not much on the menu, but you get to see a bit of what goes on in the kitchen.