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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)
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/
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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?'"---
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.
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.
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.
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.