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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?
Why was the regulation created in the first place? It doesn't make any sense to me.
"a quote" -me
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
You want real competition? This would let local broadcasts all over the f'cking nation compete with each other. Like the news presented better in New York than in Salt Lake City? Or you've got family in Kentucky and want to know what's going on out there with your high school sports?
The biggest change this could have is with advertising dollars. Local vendors would get national coverage - but if a local show suddenly became popular, it could get national dollars.
I'm not saying things are going to be perfect. Local channels that, well, suck, will find themselves really competing nationwide, and have to either get better, or change their tactics to find their niche.
There will always be local stories that are important - but for those who really want a choice, well, I hope that Echostar wins.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
I'd love for this to happen -- I would finally be able to leave my crappy local cable company and still get network programming.
But let's face it -- I don't think that Echostar really cares that much about the First Amendment in this case. They simply want to be able to get everyone to buy their service, including those people, like myself, who have resisted getting a dish because of the SNAFU with getting network programming.
That said, I hope they win.
D'oh -- the stuff that buys me beer! Ray -- the guy who sells me beer!
This drives me crazy too...if i were to spend all that money on one of the satelitte tv providers, why should i have to additionaly use rabbit-ears (or even local cable) just to get my local stations? it's insane...
however, equally annoying (to me) is some professional sports teams...i understand that they all have their own broadcasting contracts with their local stations...but something needs to be worked out...for instance if you get DirectTV and an NHL package, you can't get most of the Philadelphia Flyers games, because they are broadcast on ComcastSportNet (Comcast owns the Flyers), and Comcast doesn't release the signal to the satelitte TV providers...i think the same thing hold true for the Mets, Yankees and the other MSG teams up in New York...
we live in an age of information, and yet they continue to make it harder for us to get what we want....
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true." - Homer Simpson
I am a Canadian, and I had no idea you guys had weirdo laws like this. Up here it is standard to have multiple timeshifted feeds of all network programming, which is naturally accomplished by picking up a local feed and rebroadcasting it nationwide. It is very convienent to be able to get home an hour late for a show, and still be able to watch the feed from Ontario, or even later, the one from Vancouver (I live out east). I dunno why the companies put up with it for this long!
Today, consumers living outside of New York are permitted to subscribe to their local newspaper as well as the N.Y. Times, Washington Post or other newspapers across the country, yet those same consumers are denied access to New York television news.
Personally, I think it would be good for the country to be able to see what the local news is like in LA, Houston, Chicago, NYC, Seattle, etc.
And it would make it much more difficult for national politicians to get away with lines spun for one market. This would at least allow a shot at something interesting to see on the TV. I am tired of all the same old junk.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
The only problem i can see here is the license fees paid by local stations for movies etc. are tied to the number of viewers - so by making the channel available to the whole country could force up these costs.
I hope that the law gets over turned. It was a pretty stupid law in the first place. Granted, with three hundred CBS/ABC/NBS networks at your fingure tips your gonna get pounded with the same programming, but having the news could prove to be very useful.
If your going to go to LA for the weekend and you have access to the Local News on your TV (yes, I realize you can get this all from the internet etc..) then you can quickly get aquianted with what has been going on recently over there, weather, traffic etc....
Also, consider this quote from the article... "Even Congressional members are today prevented by this antiquated law from monitoring TV news coverage from their home states while working in their offices in Washington, D.C". This seems to be unreasonable. These people are supposed to be represnting the people, how can you expect someone to stay in touch if they can't even see the news! ;)
Any the real reason this would be awesome is to avoid that damn local blackout for sporting events ;)
-ryanHate local channels?!? Yeah, I hate some of my local channels too. There are also channels that I like that I cannot get because of the retarted local channel rules.
For instance, until recently, I was able to receive the nationwide PBS feed on my DirecTV satellite system. Unfortunately, DTV recently switched my PBS to the local PBS. Now, instead of getting all the high budget, awesome PBS programming like Nova, Frontline, Secrets of the Dead, Nature, etc. I have to watch all the terrible (not all of it, mind you, but a lot) local, low budget shite. I'm sorry, all you PBS workers, but even in Chicago, a good deal of the locally produced public television is little better than cable access tv.
What I would really like to be able to have is both, and I did for a month...but because of these ridiculous FCC rules, I can no longer have the nationwide PBS feed, and have lost most of the programming I was accustomed to getting in a timely manner.
Hell, I'd pay more for the nationwide PBS than I do for HBO.
is to keep the local stations from going out of business. local stations make their money on advertising for local businesses. if you don't watch your local station, then the local station cannot charge as much for advertising. the station in NY is not selling advertising time that is targeted to billy bob in rural oklahoma, the station in oklahoma city is. if you give viewers a choice, then you dilute the advertising market and stations lose money. thats the arguement of the NAB (national asso. of broadcasters). but I do favor removing the rules, I like to see news from other parts of the country, and its better to timeshift (and would allow greater flexibility in scheduling my tivo). For a message board that is packed with this discussion, visit www.dbsforums.com, where there are geeks such as yourself there who do nothing but debate satellite delivered television. (no, i dont work for them)
From what I know about the way local channels work currently For American Directv systems.
Since pirating the programming on american systems is legal in canada.
Local channels are rumored to be "spot beamed" so that only a specific geographic area can recieve the channel, and then only if it has a valid postal, and city/state code set. For the downstream. People in ontario canada can receive local channels on a properly configured satellite dish for either detroit, or new-york. Though once I got the local channels from pheonix arizona to work for a few minutes.
This is done, by changing some information on the iso standard smartcards with card readers which are becomign very common in canadian households with directv Satellite systems.
I personally think that anyone should be able to watch the local channels of anywhere else, at will. Why don't they want people to view the local news from another city? it doesn't cost them any extra.. the only people who might be hurt that i can think of are the advertisers whose products show up on the local channels.
And thats not such a big deal. Because the intended audience is probably still going to watch the local channels for there area.
Enough already... back to work.
- Better to speak your mind than to remain silent, or someone may speak for you.
For a long time they weren't allowed to broadcast local channels LOCALLY either. Cable providers somehow got this legislation in place as an anti-competitive tactic... it's only recently that we're able to have any sort of local TV over satellite. Which is, of course, a Good Thing(tm).
I'm sure the reason this law is in place is for the same reason the other was; the cable companies are fearful that they will be overtaken by something better. Doubtful however; even if they don't have as many subscribers for television, they will for broadband, at least until satellite becomes reasonable.
I have a friend who lives out in the middle of nowhere; he'd have to pay to have cable line laid for broadband. He was checking satellite BB prices - $100 a month for any decent speed... so there's really no competition there unless it's the only choice.
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.
They should unlock this restriction so that I can watch The Simpsons from 3 diffrent time zones.
http://www.kubuntu.org/
Satellite Radio, such as XM, are not allowed to broadcast local FM radio stations either. They have to bill XM radios as "mobile" devices, and this is why they are so expensive and you don't see any XM radio units that are standalone stereo's. Sure it can be taken out of your car and moved indoors....but they don't sell any indoor only units, because then it wouldn't be "mobile".
If this law gets thrown out, I suspect it would apply to radio as well (this would be a good thing)
This is political in nature more than we see on the surface...
A terrorist or disgruntal postal worker could capture a local station with a lot more ease than a national broadcast station. There are thousands of these facilities, some of them very very small. A person would get the attention of the nation and nobody could stop them...
I don't really see a problem with this since conversely it keeps the government from fsking one small town and nobody else hears a peep.
I would love to know what Californians really think instead of what the government, their polititians, and their newspapers tell me they think.
Give us more broadband for internet broadcasts and this will be a moot point however.
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so
It sucks here in Houston. Happy?
:-)
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.
All Your Channel Are Belong To Us
What the hell, the grammar is about the same...
"EchoStar Asks Supreme Court to Let Unlock Local Channels"
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.
...to be able to browse local broadcast TV from every market in the country? I could catch up on news of my favorite sports teams: the Redskins... the Spurs... the Cubs (well, ok, there's WGN for that)... the Capitals...
It's fun to compare local newsreaders from different markets, as well as find out what's happening in Cincinatti or Billings. But, then, I'm an information junkie.
Of course, the big losers will be the TV sports packages where you can watch any game going on in the country, because that would now be possible without paying anything extra.
dinner: it's what's for beer
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
Let's say sattelite systems are allowed to carry whatever local channel feeds they want, wherever they want. Now you can get Des Moines news in New York and vice versa. Isn't that great?
Except that unless you have friends or family in Des Moines, you really don't have much reason to watch it. In fact, even if you are in Des Moines, there's a good chance you'll opt for the higher-quality news from somewhere else. The small, stations will probably lose more local viewers this way than they gain in distant viewers. Soon the national ad dollars will flow even more to the larger stations, and the resources (and quality) of the small ones will deteriorate even more.
This is just for news. How about the impact on local broadcasts of network feeds? No one will have any reason to watch those channels at all, and local ad dollars will dry up. Besides what this does for your local TV station, think about what it does for the mom-and-pop shops. They don't have the money to advertise on a national station -- which is what we'll end up with, one primary carrier of each network in each time zone -- and no one watches the local ones. The only companies with the resources to effectively advertise will be large national chains.
Just another step in the homogenization of America.
Nope, no sig
My parents had a C-band dish installed about 15 years ago, and it was so interesting to watch local news from big cities, such as LA, NY, and Chicago. You can still find a lot of network feeds on C-band, although its extremely outdated compared to the newer services. I guess the local affiliates didn't make a fuss about c-band because it was expensive and not widely adopted compared to Cable.
You can pick up a couple of UPN networks from Dish for a small charge, at least you could a few months ago. There's a superstation package that gives you some UPN and WB stations, but they also sell those individually.
Also, you know longer need to live in specific areas to have access to locals. The old rules that required you to be so far away from the transmitters have been lifted. Dish recently added hundreds of locals to their system. Access is limited to your area based on zip code I believe. I live in DFW, and get 8 of the local DFW channels. If you're somewhat close to a decent sized city, you should be able to get them.
Where I am I can't get local channels from DSS so I was reduced to having to receive the major networks over the air with an antenna and the reception is horrid. I simply do not fucking agree with their reasons, which seem to come down to certain people and companies believing they are entitled to as much revenue stream as possible. Blah., fuck that. So I tried everything I could think of to get the locals, I tried telling them I lived in a city that got locals, doesn't work because they use spot beams, I tried convincing the guy on the phone to 'just hook it up', and I tried sending letters to the networks to get them to allow me to receive their signal on DSS (something the directTV rep will tell you to try, no doubt just to get your off of their back since it doesn't work)
After all of that I then stumbled across alt.dss.hack and therein lies your answer. There is a huge hacking scene for satellite tv that involves cheap equipment and freeware and even smart card emulation running on commodity pc hardware. I now receive every channel on directTV including the network, premiums, PPV's and all the sports, porn, etc.. etc.. all for nothing. I don't even bother keeping a small basic subcription.
Ha! Take that fuckers.
other sites you might check for info:
Kayo
dssfreeware
Pirates Den
----------
Sigs are awesome huh?
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
The same tactics with Newspapers would be obviously illegal.
Since when is it legal to scan in a newspaper and broadcast it for free over the internet?
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.
I'd love to see this, as my local ABC affiliate is unwilling to carry one of my favorite ABC programs. That was fine when I could get distant stations, but not fine after that loophole was closed. I do see two big problems, though.
First, what about syndication exclusivity? If you can drop non-local stations down in competition with a local station, how do the rules that give stations protection from others airing the same programming have to change?
Second, what about the performance contracts on the commercials? Doesn't this raise the same issue that currently requires stripping many local commercials from the national radio netcasts? Wouldn't the same problem exist with TV?
http://drteknikal.blogspot.com/
XM even provides station identification which explicitly says its a re-broadcast. I can also listen to the traffic information and local news for LA - which is good when I take a trip from my home in Fresno. XM also provides standalone radio units that are provided with new cars and trucks this year from multiple manufacturers. They also just recently released a new Alpine deck (I think), check their press releases for more information.
I've been an XM customer since Day 1 here on the West Coast. I have a Sony XM deck and I love XM. I don't miss local talk radio and news, I've got BPM, CNN and XM Comedy. Smooth. Let me know if you have any questions.
-Pat
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-Mass Media
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
Here's the gist:
:D
Originally, they just gave network stations to anyone who asked for them. Mostly New York/LA feeds. Naturally, the local stations were ticked off about this, as they have exclusive copyright over their network's programming for their area (so they argued). They tried to get it prohibited outright. But a lot of people don't get all the networks. My parents have no CBS channel over the antenna, for example.
So, in the Satellite Home Viewer Act (SHVA) (1996? 97?), Congress granted a limited exception to the exclusive programming copyrights enjoyed by TV networks and their affiliated stations because it recognized that limited numbers of households are unable to receive network signals over the air. The exception is a very narrow compulsory copyright license that direct-to-home satellite video providers may use for retransmitting signals of a defined class of television network stations to "persons who reside in unserved households." If defines "unserved household" as someone who:
"cannot receive, through the use of a conventional outdoor rooftop antenna, an over-the-air signal of grade B intensity (as defined by the Federal Communications Commission) of a primary network station affiliated with that network, and has not, with 90 days before the date on which that household subscribes, either initially or on renewal, to receive secondary transmissions by a satellite carrier of a network station affiliated with that network, subscribed to a cable system that provides the signal of a primary network station affiliated with that network."
So my parents would be able to buy CBS, but nobody else. It did provide for waivers as well, which allows my parents to obtain waivers from, say, the local NBC station, and get New York's NBC over the dish.
In 1999, the SHVA was amended by Congress, resulting in the passage of the Satellite Home Viewing Improvement Act (SHVIA). The SHVIA also amends both the 1988 copyright laws and the Communications Act of 1934. One of the key elements of the SHVIA is that it, for the first time, permits satellite carriers to transmit local television broadcast signals into local markets, also known as "local-into-local." This Act also authorizes satellite carriers to provide distant or national broadcast programming to subscribers. "Local-into-local" means that if a satellite customer lives in an area where the satellite company has decided to provide the service, the customer can receive local TV channels.
In short, the satellite company can decide to carry a local markets channels on their feed and offer those channels to that local market without getting waivers or anything. Obviously, they have to work out carry rights with the local stations involved, but that pretty well covers it.
More recently, cable companies have gotten "must-carry" approved into satellite feeds. The principle here basically says "if you carry any local stations in a market, then you have to carry all local stations in that market" in somewhat more complex terms. There's a few catches, such as they don't have to pay to carry a station if the station invokes their must-carry privilege, and so on, but the upshot is that even pointless locals like religious channels nobody watches can get satellite coverage for their area.
DirecTV responded by launching their spot beam satellite. This lets them broadcast to a single spot on the ground, covering one market. The upshot of this is that it vastly increases their total bandwidth, as they can reuse the same frequencies for locals in a bunch of different spots. St. Louis can only see St. Louis, for example. Actually, the spots are quite large, and St. Louis can probably see Chicago stations too, but the principle is basically that. Thus, by reusing all this bandwidth, they have a very simple way to put locals down all over the country without having to waste half their total bandwidth on 300+ "local" channels.
Echostar hasn't got spot beams. And they are subject to must carry too. So they're getting screwed right now. They're looking for any way out they can find. They're trying to eliminate local restrictions, they're trying to get must carry suspended, they're trying to buy DirecTV to have more bandwidth, anything. Because if they don't, they're going to go out of business. Unless they can get some spot beams up real fast. And they can't, for at least a year.
Which is the state of satellite TV.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Until this solution, DirectTV had channels NBC and NBC-W, which were the NY and LA channels. They weren't allowed to do it, and they either needed a solution (like this that they came up with) or to tell subscribers to get cable or antennae as well.
You don't think that they would drop 34 of those stations in a heart beat? I understand how the technology works, why don't you try understanding the business and legal case.
Alex
The spot beam technology, as described in a post above, physically restricts which markets can see which channels, but I know that in Boston its possible to receive New York, L.A., and several other local markets.
For some interesting info on how this is done (all illegal hacking issues aside) on the DirecTivo systems, take a look at the following threads on one of the popular hacking sites:
here,
here,
and here
--noah
Ferrari and other exotic car rentals in New York
When the satellite system started becoming popular, the local broadcasters and cable companies lobbied Wasington to protect the licenses that they had paid to broadcast their networks (from THEIR POV, this makes sense. They had paid for the right to a certain spectrum to the government when there was no other competition)
And they made the cable companies offer drop rate local only packages, normally cheaper than $10... (BTW, you can still get this package, if you call and ask they will tell you about their "cheapest package" at $30, but if you push them they will offer the $10 package)
It also seems perfectly reasonable, IF you could get the local affiliate from an Over the Air Antenna or Cable, no harm done right?
WRONG!!!!
What if your cable company sucked and (like many companies at that time) went out every time the wind changed direction? And it didn't matter if you actually HAD cable, what mattered was IF it was provided in your neighborhood you had to get the networks through cable.
And if you could receive the local stations signal was determined by: THE LOCAL STATIONS!!! And they based their determinations on distances from their broadcasting towers WHEN USING A ROOFMOUNTED ANTENNA!!! Didn't matter if you were on the other side of a mountain blocking the signal in West Virginia or not, you were within their broadcast area...
And about the only way around it was to get a letter from the local affiliate saying they exempted you.
As the satellite provider we were bound by the laws and by the whim of the local stations, and man did it suck!
Please don't ask me about conditional sports blackouts:ARGHHH!!!!
---"What did I say that sounded like 'Tell me about your day?'"---
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.
Not that anyone would WANT to listen to "MIX" 98.6. Ick.
funny munging
I don't care if I can get local broadcasts from around the country, I want to get local broadcasts from the station nearest my house. Yes, I am one of the few people who actually wants to know what's going on locally and wish I could clearly see the local channels. It would be nice if I could get others as well, but having local channels would be a nice first step.
Right now we are in an area where Dish Network won't let us get anything even remotely local and if we buy the broadcast networks package we will only be allowed to get NBC and Fox. I don't understand this. Our antenna hardly picks up any station but PBS with any clarity, so in essence the law blocks us from getting any local stations or having network access - not takes away our access to it my providing more options.
The networks contend that if a consumer is predicted to receive a signal from their local network TV station using a massive roof-top antenna, then the consumer should not have the option of obtaining programming
The networks forget that some of the people in the "predicted" area, cannot get their programming. And some of us are not allowed to have a massive roof-top antenna.
And while I'm on the subject, they should also rescind the law that says that if you live in an area opperated by an REC (Rural Electric Cooperative) you cannot get DirectTV unless you buy it from them. No free dish package for people who live out in the country. That's why we got Dish Network in the first place.
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
This already happens.
The stations pool their monies together to be able to buy programming.
Some programming they are required to carry, like Seasame Street, Nova, and so on.
But after that, they're able to make local decisions on what programs to purchase and run based on what their contributors say.
This is why one station might carry Red Dwarf, but another one will carry Antiques Road Show.
This morning I signed up for Dish Network. I got a nice channel selection, and for $5 more per month I got my 7 local channels (NBC, FOX, ABC, CBS, PBS, UPN, WB).
It *was* the lack of local channels keeping me from satellite until I heard about this local channel package. And there was no way I was shelling out the outrageous sums to the local cable monopoly.
Check out Dish; they have some great offers going on right now.
--- witty signature
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.
From my understanding of the situation, this law is due to advertising. My family used to have the broadcast network stations (ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX) on their Dish Network system, because they lived outside the range of any of the local affiliates. As long as Dish wasn't taking away viewers from the local affiliates, they could give us those stations. Plus we got West Coast feeds.
Then in 1998 they lost their local channels because Dish changed its policies. They've been planning on giving everybody local stations ever since then, but that is a lot of satellites. This is why they've got their eyes on Hughes (DirecTV). With all those extra satellites and the increased revenue, they can afford to broadcast every local affiliate in the US.
But the DirecTV merger still hasn't gone through yet, and AOL-Time-Warner-Roadrunner-Netscape-HBO-Nullsoft is really bashing satellite as much as possible. So EchoStar is using this as good PR (we're fighting for your rights) and a way to stop Time Warner from using its primary attack (you can't get the major networks with satellite).
So why do I think this won't happen? Because the local affiliates have a monopoly on local viewers. If I want to watch the latest crap-tacular reality series on CBS, I'm going to have to tune in to WRGB-6 because it's my local affiliate. Why do the local affiliates have monopolies on their respective networks? Because of advertising. Local companies can't or won't advertise on national networks, because it's too expensive and pointless in a lot of cases. Why would somebody who doesn't live in Albany, NY go there to buy a mattress?
If you follow that progression, you'll see that if Dish Network offers me crystal-clear CBS out of North Carolina and crystal-clear CBS-West out of Seattle, why would I watch over-the-air fuzzy CBS in Albany? I wouldn't. And the local affiliate would lose a lot of viewers, and they wouldn't be able to charge as much for advertising, and then they wouldn't be able to pay their slightly competent news staff, and the local companies wouldn't be able to annoy us with their commercials featuring their almost-attractive-but-still-too-ugly-for-tv relatives who can't act.
In reality, this wouldn't mean the end of the world. Local businesses would advertise on Clear Channel's local station or the local newspaper. They'd still advertise on local TV because Dish would still charge for their service and not everybody can have/would want a dish. But there would be less viewerson the local stations, and we'd have to watch WXXA (local FOX) suck even more than they already do.
But the threat of the end of local businesses might be enough to stop this from happening. That's why the law was put in place to begin with, and they'll no doubt try to use it as an argument now. I hope Echostar wins this (so I can use my DishPlayer to record the Simpsons) but I'm not holding my breath - especially when you know AOL-Time-Warner-etc. stands to lose a lot of cable subscribers if we can get those channels on satellite.
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I don't want NFL sunday ticket. I just want one game per week: the Packers. I don't want to have to pay $139 every season for "up to 13 games each weekend", when I really only want 1 game per weekend. If something like this happens, the NFL will very definately get involved. They maintain serious control over their broadcasts, and this will completely screw up the exclusive contract that the NFL has with DirecTV to provide these broadcasts.
Which is, I suspect exactly why EchoStar is filing this suit. Notice, at the bottom of the article a reference to another article:
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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.
I'm a hockey fan, hell more than that I'm a sports fan. There, I said it.. and your probably wondering how this is at all relevant.
Well here in Central Arkansas (SEC country) we have a serious issue with our ABC affiliate. In order to bring more Arkansas Razorback games to us, they have entered into a contract with Jefferson Pilot sports. This contract forces ABC to show a bunch of SEC sports programs in lieu of the regular national programs. This means that we rarely get to see the big matchup football games. We regularly miss out on big college football games, hockey games (at least until basketball season is over), and anything else that is nationally shown on Saturday.
This isn't the only issue, however. Take my parents.. they live in a strange valley RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF LITTLE ROCK. The geography of this neighborhood makes it nearly impossible to actually get the local stations via broadcast. So if my parents want to use a satellite (and they do, being from Colorado they like the sports packages that allow them to see Colorado sports games) they have to do without local programming... and this means missing anything broadcast on these stations... They attempted to get a waiver signed by the local affiliates.. but that didn't work out. So now they are forced into "watching" local stations they can not even receive...
So here we have this DSS technology which would allow us to see the games we want (no SEC specials) clearly... and yet it is regulated away from us. Someone fix this... please.
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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.
The apartment complex that I am about to move into allows satellite dishes for an additional $75 deposit for damage. Seems reasonable to me...
...except that by Texas state law, the apartment renter must carry $100,000 of insurance on the dish and the unit in case of damage.
Sounds to me like the cable companies paid for that one. Vive la révolution!
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Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
Echostar sent up their spot beam satellite on Feb. 21st and hope to have it running by May. I was not aware they jumped their schedule up so much from the last time I'd read about it. My bad.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
The big problem, if I'm reading a lot of these messages correctly, is that local advertisers will suddenly be "competing" on a national scale. What good is to to them to advertise if only a tiny percentage of the people who are actually local will see the ad.
But there's a technological fix to this problem. If satellite customer had some level of PVR (TiVo-like) functionality built into the receiver, they could easily allocate some amount of storage for local advertising. When the user isn't watching TV, or in the middle of the night, the thing could record a set of local advertisements. Then when your watching TV, it'll just insert those 30 second spots seemlessly where there ads would go. If you the NBC feed from Las Angeles even though your in Orlando, instead of getting LA local ads, you get Orlando ads which your PVR recorded and stored without you even knowing it.
In fact advertisers might really start to like this idea as it would allow them some level of targeted TV advertising right to a given neighborhood or maybe based on user preferences.
This is essentially what local cable companies do with national feeds. You DO get local advertising on ESPN and whatnot, but NOT over the satellite. The ESPN (or other network) feed has spaces for local advertising. If you're a DirecTV subscriber, you've seen the Miss Cleo tarrot card ads and other junk like that right? Those are contracted with DirecTV. While you're watching those ads, your buddy who has cable might be seeing an ad for a local business.
The trick will be to make sure PVR are a STANDARD part of the satellite offering, not an add-on.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
This case is about EchoStar looking for more business.
Of course it would be nice to get a station from another state to see sports games that are blacked out.
On my local cable Reds games were scheduled on ESPN and Fox Sports Net. Fox has the rights to those games, and ESPN was literally blacked out. I lost the whole channel until the game was over.
A local wings and beer place recently got a Bearcats game illegally from another cities broadcast through their Satellite dish. IMHO that was wrong considering the game was blacked out and the school, stadium, and all lost revenue but the bar was making hand over fist.
Blackouts might suck, but taking money from the teams or whatever the case may be, is wrong.
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The way networks are broadcasted these days are totally obsolete, a holdover from when the only way you could get TV was via a local transmitter, including all the severe limitations that brings.
The vast majority of content on TV is produced and distributed nationally. But because of the reliance on local channels rather than nationwide networks, it gets distributed haphazardly and with gross inefficiency. At the same time there is a need for a modest amount of local and regional content (news, public access, sports), but broadcasting that everywhere makes no sense. And while there may be demand for international content (i.e. Anime), it rarely makes it onto the networks at all (at least not in one piece).
Contrariwise, advertising typically only relevant at a local level. There's no sense in people in Houston TX getting ads for Bentara's in New Haven CT, nor should someone in New Haven be getting advertisments for Sonic, a southern regional chain.
The solution? Restructure the way TV is delivered entirely. Allow the (far more efficient) satellite networks to focus entirely on the globally, nationally, and regionally produced material, giving everyone equal and complete access, while integrating Personal Video Recorders into the equation to deliver an appropriate mix of local, regional, and national advertising. Since commercials are broadcast many times over, you can have a special, satellite-controlled channel broadcasting all commercials for all markets, with the PVR downloading and storing only those targeted specifically to the viewer and locality, and inserting them into the broadcast at the appropriate time. It could also allow time-shifting, although that might better be handled with multiple channels. Let local broadcasters focus on local material and end network affiliation. Or provide them with a way to purchase select (current and classic) content from the national networks in a syndicated fashion. Or just let them die off until only a few local material stations are left, and free up the bandwidth from the airways. Digital cable could do the same thing at the local redistribution station, eliminating the need for the PVR component or local air broadcasting entirely. Restructuring could also allow for new services: user-controlled subtitling and dubbing subchannels for international content and non-english-speaking audiences; individually targeted and dynamic advertising; auto-inserted local news, sports, and weather alerts on any channel; low-demand content broadcast late at night and stored for later; Pay-per-view capabilities for individual shows.
Of course, this would all require substantial re-legislation, with the accompanying political wrangling and lobbying. If nothing else, universal PVRs and thus personal timeshifting would dramatically change the way networks compete directly against each other. But no more missing the Red Sox game just because you live near New York. No more missing Adult Swim because your local cable provider doesn't carry Cartoon Network. No more sitting through commercials intended for another audience, or missing shows because they're on at an inconvinient time or opposite another one.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
I was a satellite dish salesman from 1994 to 2000.
On either of the little dish companies, Dish Network and DirecTV, or for that matter the BUDs (big, ugly dishes) you can get broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, NBC or FOX) from various cities around the country. Actually you can't get them because your elected officials kowtow to the National Association of Broadcasters. If you work in the saltellite business you hate the NAB with the same passion as people here hate the RIAA and Disney. Something called the Satellite Home Viewers Act prohibits you from having broadcast channels from any city other than the one you live closest to. The thing about the newspapers is an analogy to explain the unfairness and of prohibiting you from watching NBC from any city other than the one you live near.
Do you get fuzzy recepting off the antenna from the local broadcast stations? Tough. If you live inside a line on a map called a "grade B contour" you cannot get the distant networks. The standard is severe. For example, here in Missouri, people who live 75 miles west of St. Louis as the crow flies out in the sticks who get crappy reception with big, expensive rooftop antennas are still prohibited from getting distand locals. Very few people in this country live outside the grade signal. Unless you're in the middle of Montana or someplace like that you are prohibited by law from receiving distant broadcast networks.
The NAB has an unusually powerfull hold on our congress because no politician wants to piss off the TV stations in their district. And since satellite dish owners are a small percentage of the electorate, then our elected scumbags side with the rich and powerfull NAB even though the prohibition on distant broadcast signals is unfair and certainly unconstitutional.
I got very involved writting letters to my congressman and senators and talking to customers about this issue back in '97 and '98 before the last Satellite Home Viewers Act and, at the end of it, became totally disgusted with the politcal process because it is clear that both Republicans and Democrats side with the rich and powerfull against the rights of individuals whenever they can get away with it.
Since getting out of the satellite business I've simply stopped watching TV and that's what I reccomend to you. Read a good book, meet friends at Starbucks for conversation, play the new Jedi Knight game. Screw TV.
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.
Also check out DTV, they also have some great offers, and they have locals some areas DISH doesn't (I think), and if one or the other is blocked by trees you don't/can't cut down the other might not. Plus DTV has the DTiVo :-)
DISH is quite good too though (I was a subscriber for 4 years), and better then any cableco I have ever seen.
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.
Let's see, This Old House is WGBH, Boston, as is, if memory serves, Victory Garden, and perhaps Masterpiece Theater and Mystery. The Woodwright's Shop is WUNC, Chapel Hill, NC. Austin City Limits is (surprise) Austin. Washington Week in Review is WETV or something like that in Washington, D.C., KCET in San Diego, or is it L.A.? (I'm doing these from memory, folks) does at least one good show, but I can't remember which at the moment. Nightly Business Report is from the Florida affiliate and Wall Street Week with Louis Rukeyser was Maryland Public Television until they went insane a couple of weeks ago and gave Rukeyser the boot. (Apparently he wasn't bringing in enough of the pre-pubescent demographic to suit them. I'm expecting it to go to being just plain Wall Street Week and then just plain weak.)
Check the opening or closing credits on most of the PBS shows and you'll see that they come from specific affiliates or state PBS systems. I thing Houston is to blame for "Barney".
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
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.
If there were just some way to block down-convert satellite channels to the frequencies all my family's TVs and VCRs can tune so that they could all be on the co-ax inside the house and any channel available in any room with any other channel simultaneously available in any other room without having to screw around with a seperate receiver for each TV and for each VCR (the way the cable companies used to try to charge extra for each tap), I'd dump cable in a heartbeat.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
For example, certain companies (e.g., Sony, Bose, Pioneer Elite) prohibit mail-order and Internet sales of some of their products. Their contracts with retailers prohibit out-of-market selling, allegedly to "ensure that their products are properly set up and supported," but really to protect the margins of the local boutique retailers who cannot compete with mass market stores.
If you want to buy an Elite receiver, you can travel to New York to buy it from J&R, but you cannot mail order it from J&R. In short, you must travel to where the product is sold. This is obviously not fair to the consumer, but it must be legal because they keep doing it.
In the same way, I suspect the networks can claim the right to control how their product is delivered. They have decided to grant regional monopolies to local broadcasters, and using the same principal as Pioneer, they claim the right to prohibit other stations from broadcasting outside of their assigned areas. If you want to watch New York affiliates, you have to travel to the New York area.
This is speculation on my part. IANAL, and I have no first-hand experience with either industry. But, if this regulation is upheld, I'll bet this is the justification used. It's not right, it's not fair, but it's business as usual.
You might be surprised how good US TV is compared to the rest of the world. Especially in journalism. Its that whole free press thing. Although I do like the BBC, of course, although they appear to look away from their own problems like everyone else.
Al Jazeera is probably biased as hell. CNN is biased, we all know that. As a newsman, I bet you just by what I have seen of Al Jazeera, that at least CNN makes more of a concerted effort to be less biased. That would be my take of it, but what would I know, I am only a video journalist for the local stations you despise 40+ hours a week.
Local newspapers still exist. No reason to believe it would be different for television shows.
Sorry. That is such a simplistic statement that I won't even go into it.
Too bad, you argument has no credibility.
If you really want distant locals you can do one of the following.
1. If you have a Camper/Trailer send a copy of the current registration to Echostar along with a form you can find on dishnetwork.com, and you can qualify for the TruckDrivers/RV waiver and choose up to 2 distant networks.
2. "Move" You tell Dish that you are moving your service address (the bill will still ben sent to your "billing" address). You can either move outside a contour B into a "white area" or into a Market area where locals are provided.
Keep in mind with the second solution choose from NY, LA, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Atlanta. Other cities will be changing over to spot beams and thus will be unavailable outside of about 200 Miles from their home city. The spot beams will be activating sometime soon (whenever they get their newest satellite, Echostar VII operational)
Point well taken. I hadn't thought about it that way.
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
Okay, moderator...who ever modded this down is fucking stupid. Yes, you, you fucking idiot. Normally I don't care if I get modded down, but I'll make an exception in your case.
/. anymore...because democracies will vote themselves bread and circuses until they destroy themselves and Slashdot moderators are fucking idiots.
My posts are always given 2 points because of my karma level, not because someone modded it up. Yet you called my comment overrated. Why the fuck are you wasting your time with me and not burning a point on a Troll? Because you're a fucking retard.
It infuriates me to see other people fuck with my shit for NO APPARENT REASON! The comment above was in reference to a comment by another user, and granted, it's off-topic (at best) but it's also BURIED IN THE FUCKING THREAD. Why the hell are you bothering to read down in threads to moderate something down? Why don't you waste your brainpower on something that is actually grabbing the attention of more than two fucking people, MORON.
This is why I refuse to moderate on
This is a few days later, maybe you'll notice the response.
Broadcasting 200+ locals costs more than 12 locals. Sure the spot beams are already there (sunk cost) but they need to transmit all the locals up to the Satellites and down to the area.
Additionally, they could use the spot beams for other pay services. For example, many areas have a local sports network (S. Florida had the Sunshine Network, New York has YES or something similar), New England has NESN, that may not necessarily get into the must cover situations, many are local cable networks, etc.
If you move the networks onto 12 general purpose channels, that frees up room for 200 channels for spot beaming. You could carry regionally attractive programming that would be more beneficial than the local network affiliates (that sometimes preempt shows).
My point: legally they need to do spot coverage, so they do it. Once they don't have to, they can give consumers something they'd prefer (east coast and west coast feeds with no preempting).
Once that requirement goes away, I don't think that they would carry the locals, as people would rather get a separate East and West coast feed (part of the old appeal of DirecTV 4 years or so ago) in case shows conflict. Then they redirect those spot-beam satellite service to more profitable persuits.
I think that eliminating local news would have implications that we need to consider. Sure its mostly crappy fluff, but at least it gets SOME coverage to the masses about what is going on locally.
Alex