Locals question

[lee635]

If the DBS providers add a city, are they required to service the entire DMA or can they service a partial DMA? For example, let's say a certain DMA is quite large and the spot doesn't hit the enitre DMA, can the DBS company offer the locals to the folks covered by the spot, or are they required to cover the enitre DMA in order to offer locals?

[afh]

lee65,

The spot beam should cover an entire DMA. As far as I can determine, there is no partial cover of a DMA with the current line-up of lil that is offered now. What ever channels are broadcast in the DMA the DBS provider has to carry the channel. I think the FCC has a must carry rule that pertains to your question. If the channel is a 'low power' station it does not have to be carried by the DBS company. Otherwise, the sat company is required to carry the locals if a retransmission deal can be worked out with each local station in a DMA.

[Jacob S]

That reminds me of the area I live in. There is a part of a spot beam that I am barely in and then another spot beam just below me over another portion of the state but none over the whole area. With the new satellite going up there is going to be a spotbeam over my entire area. I see that some areas have overlapping to where there are two or three spotbeams over it.

[Geronimo]

Please remember that DMAs do not respect state lines. THe Washington DC DMA contains all or part of DC, VA, MD, WV and PA.

Must carry deals with carrying some of the stations in a DMA but not others (that si forbidden). as far as I know there is no DMA only partially covered however these are not laser beams. A spot may spill over into one or mre other DMAs---even though it does not contain programmming receivable in those DMAs.

[HTguy]

E* has a spot on Utah but is unable to cover the extreme southern portion of the state. That's one DMA that is pretty much defined by the state boundry. So when Utah went off CONUS the subs down there lost their "locals" in Salt Lake City.

If they really want to they may be able to get them back with 24-32" dishes.

[Geronimo]

I stand corrected HT Guy

[Jacob S]

Can someone get their locals in a neighboring DMA if they are not offered where you are at?

[jrjcd]

depends on where they live in the DMA...all the DMAs are governed by basically "horse and carriage" policies in regards to OTA signals and your reception of those signals is based on a map, not reality-depending on where you are on the map depends on whether you can get out of market nets...