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EchoStar Asks Supreme Court to Let Unlock Local Channels
Consul writes "For a long time, satellite television systems were not allowed to broadcast local television signals outside of that local area. But EchoStar is asking the Supreme Court for that to be changed." This particular
issue drives me insane and I hope the courts throw out the lame laws. I don't
care about local programming, they shouldn't force it on me. The same tactics
with Newspapers would be obviously illegal.
How does allowing satellite providers to carry local programming equate with forcing the programming on viewers?
The idea here is that local broadcasters are highly regulated by the FCC, and allowing competitors to carry the same network material would alter the balance severely enough that the entire local bandwidth / ownership / affiliation regulations would have to be overhauled.
So, in typical government fashion, they decided that that would be quite a bit of work, and there's always some chance that the clock could roll back fifty years, so better to make something illegal than deal with its repurcussions in a modern, thoughtfull way.
Or, at least, that's the way I see it.
Me, I hate network TV. My first choice for a Supreme Court verdict would be "Not only is it illegal for EchoStar to broadcast this crap, it's illegal for local stations or cable companies, too." Failing that, I'd settle for "The networks own the content, and if they license it to EchoStar, it's between them and their local affiliates who they're screwing."
Cheers
-b
Aside from whether or not I think the law is absurd or not, being totally ignorant of the FCCs reasoning for it in the first place, I'm pretty sure the whole reason behind this suit is that Echostar still hasn't gotten their shit together to broadcast the local channels. At directv (where I work) we have a reasonably new spot beam satellite so we can re use our frequencies in different markets, to increase the amount of locals we can carry. Even if the law changed so we could give all locals to everyone, we couldn't actually broadcast that many channels to everyone so it would be useless. Echostar is just banking on the merger with us to get their local channels going, but this lawsuit looks like an ace in the hole if they can't get everything together yet still are forced to broadcast locals for everyone, since they'd then get an advantage by being able to let everyone see all those locals, and they'd make the Directv spot beam semi-worthless, and probably own cable as well.
Shouldn't quality reporting on /. begin with titles that make sense?
Having given this matter a full thirty seconds of consideration, it seems that allowing local channels to be broadcast nationally would be an incentive to reduce to the total number of local affiliates. Granted, local programming such as the evening news leaves much to be desired, but perhaps some local news is better then none. Otherwise, further cultural homogenization will occur as the only local news in California will be LA, SF, and SD.
Granted, it seems some people here don't care about local news, but I think for many, it's (sadly) their main tie to the community.
The real problem is that the local stations don't have he rights from the networks to show the programming anywhere but their local area. The local station in each area has an exclusive right to transmit networks to the local users. If distant locals are allowed it violates the exclusive distribution contract with the local stations.
This is one advantage of libing out in the sticks. We can't get broadband affordably, but we can get distant networks. Personally I would take the broadband.
Consider that most local news stations pick up their regional/national/international news from a wire service and feed it to a talking head, so that news is pretty much the same wherever you go.
Now consider that if your local news station can't compete in its market against some station from New York, you aren't going to get local news. A station in Ass End, AK isn't going to be able to compete with a station in NYC, because not much happens in Ass End, the national news is all the same, and the WNYC has tons of money to throw around because of the size of its market... so Ass End's station eventually goes out of business. What then, when Ass End has a mayoral election?
Along that same line of thought, television contracts for things such as NFL broadcasts are very dependent on certain regions only getting certain games. The value of that package to the networks changes greatly if anyone with a dish can get any game regardless of where they live. This would also hurt DirecTV's exclusive ability to offer their NFL Sunday Ticket package, which currently is the only legal way for a DirecTV or Dish or cable subscriber to receive any NFL game they want. BTW, Dish and DirecTV are attempting to merge, so it seems Dish has decided that the ability to offer distant locals is more valuable than the NFL Sunday Ticket revenues are.
The regulation has to do with advertising. If a small, local company advertises on your local NBC affiliate during the news, that company only has to pay the local affiliate for the airtime. If a big company wants to target an advertisement to a local population, they do the same thing--for about the same price (politics and all that aside).
If everyone can watch, say, the DC NBC news and it seems that many people outside of the DC area actually prefer that station over, say, the Baltimore NBC station, then the problem becomes how much to charge for ad slots. The local companies are paying per TV that is turned on during their commerical (ratings, etc) regardless of location. If half of these TVs aren't even anywhere close to you--like on the other side of the country--then the company is paying too much for little benefit. The DC NBC station then charges huge amounts for the ad slots and then only big corporations can afford the time. This isn't fair for small business.
In a perfect technological world, the solution would be that you could watch any affiliate you like of NBC, CBS, ABC, etc, and since they all have the same national feed you would always get the same national ads. When the remote affiliate inserts their own commercial, though, you would be forced instead to watch a commercial that is inserted at your local level. In other words, I could still watch Enterprise via UPN in Detroit (because ours always sucks) but when the Detroit station cuts to a local commercial, I would instead watch a Columbus commercial. That seems reasonable to me--but technologically its not quite there yet.
Long, cute, or funny Sigs are just another form of over compensation, used by geeks, nerdz, etc.
Guys, do you really think that the Sat. companies are going to broadcast 100s of NBC stations instead of 2 (New York and LA, to get the east coast and west coast network stuff) and provice 198 more pay per view channels?
People don't really care about the local as much as they care about the network programming.
However, there is some good in this country to have local news. Any more eliminatation of local involvement jeopardizes the Republic, that needs a citizenry knowledgable of what is going on at the local level. The separation of powers between the state and federal governments is weakened if you don't get information on local officials without jumping through hoops...
Alex
And what has it got to do with newspapers?
I can go down to my local mom and pop newstand here in upstate NY and get my local paper AND the NY Times, AND the Boston Globe, AND the London Times, AND. . . on, and on, and on.
Not to mention all kinds of magazines from all kinds of origins.
The statement as written not only makes little sense, but appears to contradict itself.
As it stands Satellite is regulated into a distinct competitive disadvantage to cable, which the cable companies are trumpeting all over. . . local channel advertisting.
Go figure.
KFG
And this is the same reason why a vast majority of radio streams from local stations now either go dead when they're playing local commercials or switch over (in the case of radio.yahoo.com and others) to a special "internet advertising" stream. Which normally consists of the same two lame commercials being played over and over until music/discussion begins again. Its crazy. And highly irritating.
Meow meow meow meow, meow meow meow meow...
Charlie is as cheap and greedy as they come. He doesn't want to broadcast every local market feed on CONUS. In fact, he can't. There simply isn't enough satellite bandwidth for that many locals. What he really wants is to offer just a few big markets nationwide. Want your locals from the UP of Michigan? Too bad. You get Detroit.
For the next Charlie Chat, ask him why he doesn't carry west coast feeds of most channels. Answer? "Takes up bandwidth." "Redundant programming." I can see the same argument from him for local networks.
Don't be fooled into thinking you'll get 500 locals to choose from one day.
You mean just as ad space in the London Times might compete for advertising dollars with my hometown rag?
KFG
Poor reasoning though, in today's marketplace.
Fact is, most people still interested in watching the local stations are doing so precisely because either A) they're too cheap or poor to subscribe to a cable or satellite subscription, or B) they want to watch the local news.
Local stations will pretty much be able to stay in business as long as there are a fair number of people interested in receiving free TV via antenna. (With cable and satellite prices climbing ever higher, I think it's safe to bet that "free" sounds good enough to lots of local residents.)
Issues about what's carried on monthly subscription-based alternates to broadcast TV seem rather moot to me. Even the argument about advertising makes little sense to me.
If you're a small, local store - why do you *care* that people thousands of miles away see your TV ad? They're not your target customer anyway. The ad still reaches the audience it was created for, and everything else is just "spillover" that doesn't typically benefit the person buying the advertising.
Therefore, letting local stations be re-broadcast nationwide via satellite and/or cable shouldn't really change anything.
However, if the content is broadcasted at another (earlier) time by a remote station, it makes the remote more attractive. For example, on the west coast, you could set your VCR or TiVo (or, if DirTV would do the same, DirectTiVo) to record remote east coast locals, and just watch all your favorite prime time shows when you get home, commercial free.
Currently I have both DirectTV and DishNetwork. I have 2 DirecTiVos. I first got Dish, but I got tired of waiting for Echostar to come up with a good digital PVR (I have a DishPlayer, which was good for its time, but buggy as hell, and the 521 (?) doesn't seem to be much better). DirTV's DirecTiVo just blows Dish's PVRs out of the water. The main reason why I still have Dish is because of the SuperStations package (one of which is UPN, not available in my market), which would be equivalent to remote locals. The SuperStations package is why many people choose Dish over DirTV... Another thing I miss from Dish is a simplified international programming (DirTV reps can't figure out how to set my account up to get all english programming plus spanish channels, I have to choose either or).
Why is EchoStar pushing for this? Probably because that way they will be able to claim true 500+ channels when competing against cable (today they can claim 500 channels, but legally, you can only get about 200). Since must carry forced them to carry all this extra channels, overtaxing their bandwidth (to the point that some DBS users have gone back to cable for better picture quality), they mights as well try and overturn the law, and turn must-carry into a competitive advantage against cable. E* will probably charge ~$5 per market, so you won't just get all remote local channels automatically. They're betting that the extra $5 to $10 bucks most DishNetwork subscribers would pay to get NY and LA locals would upset any lost revenue on premium sport channels.
If they get the law overturned, they gain a big competitive advantage over cable. If the E*/D* merger doesn't go through, E* will have a competitive advantage against DirTV (since DirTV current local implementation is based on spot beams, preventing them from offering all locals for all regions). If the merger with DirTV goes through, they'll gain more orbital positions, and will be able to still offer all locals. E* wins either way.
I keep reading posts from people who think that EcoStar is trying to get the right to re-broadcast all local TV stations. If that is what they wanted, it wouldn't be a problem, everyone would love that. What they are actualy asking for is the right to broadcast the 10 or 20 largest affiliates to everyone and just ignore the rest of the local stations. This also isn't just something that local stations could just pre-empt, the satalites just don't have enough bandwidth to push local content from every station in the country. This will take viewers away from local stations(i'm not saying thats a bad thing) I also have seen a couple of posts stating that there are not enough dish users for this to really make a dent in any local station. The #1 reason there are so few dish users is because most people would end up having to set up an antenna in order to watch ABC/NBC/FOX/CBS. If that was no longer a problem dishes would be flying off shelves, price woudln't even be a factor, a good DirecTV package is cheeper than my local extended basic cable package.
A lot of people are talking about how if we open it up, we could lose local content, but I think one thing people are missing is that a lot of us already live without local content to speak of.
My hometown is a small suburb(about 4000 people) around Worcester, Massachusetts. The 'local' stations are all based in Boston. If you watch the news, you'll hear lots of news about Boston events, but unless there's a grisly murder in my town, you're not gonna hear anything about it. And for that matter, you won't hear anything about Worcester, which is a major city. People in Boston just don't give a rat's ass about what happens in Worcester, and Worcester isn't quite big enough to support its own stations.
My point is that someone who's in a tiny town isn't gonna lose access to local information, because they already don't have it. The Boston stations aren't going to suddenly go under because of deregulation, because they've got a large market interested in the local news. Any place that's big enough to support local programming now is pretty unlikely to suddenly lose all that programming.
In the mean time, those of us looking for serious local news coverage already turn to alternate sources than television...newspapers in particular. Most small towns have some sort of local paper, even if it is a tiny piece of fluff.
I say open it up, let technology do what it can. If anything, the competition could only make the content better.
hot foreign sheep.
If half of these TVs aren't even anywhere close to you--like on the other side of the country--then the company is paying too much for little benefit. The DC NBC station then charges huge amounts for the ad slots and then only big corporations can afford the time. This isn't fair for small business.
So what? Seriously!
From the article the issue at hand is consumer choice:
Current law provides that consumers can only have access to their local network channels, and prohibits Americans from watching local news and information originating from other areas of the country. EchoStar believes this law violates the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
When we get to the effect on advertising if the Supreme Court *allows* EchoStar to relay non-local programming, essentually that the rates will change.
Again, so what?
These companies are SUPPOSED to be paying advertising rates based on eyeballs and ears, NOT on some beurocratic ideal of "what is fair" and what is "not fair" to the local pizza joint.
The application that you are describing creates an artificially low viewer rate for some stations, thus an artifically low advertising card for those stations too.
If the WUSA audience is not the audience YOU want then you need to advertise elsewhere.
If you advertise to a local market then broadcast radio is where to drop your $, or ANOTHER TV station that draws the viewers you are trying to advertise to.
It works the same with other media, newspapers and magazines with wider circulation can (not required) command a higher rate for ads than some little weekly paper with limited circulation.
The problem here is the government trying to mess with a market that will work just fine if there were no beurocratic meddling to begin with.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
What we need is a way of watching programs directly without the network middlemen deciding for us. What's the use of having 20 NBC affiliates at the touch of my remote? Just so I can watch Will and Grace across 4 time zones?
Ideally we'd program in the shows we want and the satellite provider would deliver the programs (encrypted and copy-proofed, of course ;)) to some TiVo-like device. We could get charged by the program or whatever and not even have to watch ads anymore.
The satellite provider would license the shows directly (more profit to the producers of the show) and we'd get to see what we want, when we want.
And OTA HDTV might grow some lasting roots with entusiasts, since it's the only for of HDTV you can still timeshift/record using PC HDTV tuners (unlike satellite HDTV, which you can't timeshift)
Now consider that if your local news station can't compete in its market against some station from New York, you aren't going to get local news.
We get "local" programs from all over Europe. This hasn't killed the smaller country's stations even in places where people readily understand the neighbors' language. On the contrary: you can get Radio Luxembourg all from the South of France to the East of Germany, and it fares pretty well (... and in the process tarnishes the reputation of Luxembourg, but that's another question altogether...). Basically, RTL has programs in French, German, English for their various markets, while the local market is still being served by a program in Luxembourgish language (which still does include coverage of local events, so you won't miss neither the news about the recent battue hunt, and its impact on the local wildlife & economy, nor the news about the whereabouts of the postmen's Union's president and "his" money, etc. ...).
For international news, it's interesting to get different viewpoints: indeed, in many conflicts (Yougoslavia, Iraq vs. US, etc.), the French have a slightly different point of view that the rest of Europe. Being able to compare French and German news reporting gives you the ability to hear both sides of the story (don't worry: since September 11th, even the French side with the US, though...)
Moreover, being able to check the local weather of your skiing resort before going there is also interesting. And before we had Eurosport, many people watched RAI for its excellent sport coverage, even though they didn't understand Italian (but understanding the language is not really needed in order to follow a soccer match...).
So, being able to get local programming that is not local to you is a definite plus (except of course if you live at a place whose "local" programs become popular all over Europe for the wrong reasons...)
Say no to software patents.
I don't know about you, but local programming and culture is what defines the way I live. You can have your Starbucks and Burger Kings--I'll take a latte at the corner store any day. And that goes for programming, too--"Bay Area Backroads" is a great show, and yes, I would like to hear about what's going in Berkeley, too.
Hey, wake up! I think the libertarian Slashdot ethos has convinced you all that more choice for you personally is always a good thing.
Wake-up call: it isn't.
The 'must-carry' provisions are meant to keep local broadcasters alive - not give people across the country access to their content. When national providers like EchoStar can pick and choose which local stations to air, and which (the much more important part) not to in particular markets, then local news is going to get worse than it already is. And national mainstream media will become even more powerful. What happens when even local ad dollars go to Time-Warner (or whatever) instead of to your local affiliate, goodbye any local autonomy. More fluff, all the time.