[Marcus S]

Which locals do most believe will be added after E*VIII goes up. Your speculation of existing locals moving to spot beams after are of interest also. Do you believe that E* will skip certain DMA's? Why do you believe did E* offered Austin, TX & Honolulu before serving the Top 50?? (all speculation assuming that E* merger plans do not go through with *D).

E* is current missing the following cities from the Nielsen DMA report Top 50 cities.

Baltimore, MD
Hartford & New Haven, CT
Milwaukee, WI
Columbus, OH
Memphis, TN
Norfolk-Portmouth-Newport, VA
New Orleans, LA
Greensboro-High Point-Winston Salem, NC
Harrisburg-Lancaster-Lebanon-York, PA
Buffalo, NY
Providence, RI-New Bedford, MA
Louisville, KY

There is also speculation that E* will eventually offer locals to Las Vegas, NV, Omaha, NE and Colorado Springs, CO. That would again seem to be a pretty big gap if E* does this.

 

[Mark Holtz]

The most important markets is the top 20 DMAs, and both Dish and DirecTV have those covered. The rest is just analyzing whether or not it would be cost effective to offer locals. I think 1 of the DMAs can't be offerred at the moment because Dish and the major stations can't come to a carriage agreement.

 

[Marcus S]

Z'Loth, do you see this as a cost issue for out of control cable rates vs DBS providers that can just say NO?

 

[bryan27]

I don't think we will see a lot of new markets added. Since many of E*VIII's spot beams duplicate those of E*VII I wouldn't doubt that E* will reserve a lot of the space as an inorbit spares. Think of it, what would happen if the two TPs for Southern California on 119 have a permenant failure. Where would the stations go? Why the backup one TP beam on 110 of course

E* can also use this as more merger leverage by saying 'We can't add any more cities as we need the additional space on 110 as backup'.

 

[Steve Mehs]

How about scraping the locals and adding the Maxs, Goodlife, Trio and all the others. nah, wont happen.

Seriously, I think the next 5 markets E* will add are
Vegas, Baltimore, Hartford/New Haven, Columbus and Memphis.

 

[Mike123abc]

There has to be several factors that they must consider:

1. What percentage of people in the DMA are on the dish? (something like 40% will opt for LIL the first year I think is the statistic)

2. What is the cost of lifeline cable?

3. Will the major networks want to negotiate with dish?

4. How many must carry stations are in the dma that will clog up the transponders? Some markets have just the majors and maybe one or two minors, some have like 10 minors what a pain.

5. What is the uban to rural make up of the DMA... i.e. what is the potential market need for locals?

6. what is the spot capacity. Frequency reuse can only be so close to other spots. Looking at the E7 and E8 maps, looks like NE markets will pickup a bunch of DMA or about 5 of the list mentioned above

 

[Marcus S]

Mike, I don't think it matters. Charlie has been possed by damons to suddenly offer additional locals to those that those qualify at any expense. Agree though, that you and I will be subsidizing past the top 50.