Small Markets with No Locals - Ever?

I know that my DMA (Joplin) is ranked 148 out of 210 and last I looked there was 11 already that were lower then me that had locals available. There is alot more being added my the end of the year as well.

My parents actually live in Quincy. Everytime I go home, I'm amazed by the lack of HD content available there. They can receive only NBC and CBS and sometimes PBS OTA. I've never had any luck trying to pick up KTVO (ABC) out of Kirksville, and I'm not even sure if they're broadcasting HD. ABC, FOX, and CW are all carried as SD subchannels on the NBC or CBS affilates' channels. Comcast offers no HD other than the locals. I'm trying to convince them to switch to satellite, but since D* doesn't have their locals I'm thinking it might be best to wait until Feb. and see how things play out with the digital converstion (to see what they can get OTA).

I suspect that within 10 to 12 years, Dish and Directv will carry every channel in every DMA...

I live in Champaign but it's my Dad that lives in the Quincy area, I grew up there. We always had DirecTV so we just never have switched over. He only gets NBC and CBS OTA, and gets ABC and FOX on the dish out of New York. We're probably the only people in the whole area that have Direct still, everybody has Dish since the locals are there. Sure would be nice if they put some effort into getting all the SD locals before doing HD locals (except Champaign, of course).

Wish they'd hurry up on those too...

inkahauts said:

I suspect that within 10 to 12 years, Dish and Directv will carry every channel in every DMA...

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whoa now there tonto!! lets not get too optimistic there.....

shenefie said:

whoa now there tonto!! lets not get too optimistic there.....

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I'm basing that statement on 2 things....

1. Converting all hardware to MPEG-4 capable, there bye eliminating any need for channels to be broadcast twice, as all HD stations except for a bout 5 are done today, freeing up a huge amount of bandwidth...

In conjunction with that, they will slowly convert all LIL channels into MPEG-4 so that again, they can broadcast each station once... as they are already beginning to do in some markets. Each time they make a market fully MPEG-2 only, they will have the room to fire up new markets....

3. New Stas going up... D12 next year,and I suspect we could see BSS sats go up in the next 10 years, which is about the same timeline as D10 was when they first started talking about it... That just expands bandwidth witout effecting any current bandwidth..

illini_razorback said:

I live in Champaign but it's my Dad that lives in the Quincy area, I grew up there. We always had DirecTV so we just never have switched over. He only gets NBC and CBS OTA, and gets ABC and FOX on the dish out of New York. We're probably the only people in the whole area that have Direct still, everybody has Dish since the locals are there. Sure would be nice if they put some effort into getting all the SD locals before doing HD locals (except Champaign, of course).

Wish they'd hurry up on those too...

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What they need to do is simply add markets, it doesn't matter anymore if they add them in HD or SD. All markets will fire up in MPEG-4 now, which means if you have the proper hardware,they only need to broadcast the HD signal, and the box can convert the signals to whatever output is need to be able to display it on your tv...