Satellite TV Hearing Creates Controversy in Congress RE: SHVERA

[M Sparks]

oh yeah and those really aren't local since they are 50 miles away and takes either a Sat or a 50ft antennae tower to pick them up. But those outdated laws somehow say a station that is 50 miles away from me is my local. Yeah right.

The HD age changes things up too. My "local" stations are 150 miles away, but they have "local" translators (even those are 25 miles away). One is full power digital, but 480P only. The others are low powered analog, and I can barely receive them. So without satellite, there is no way to receive "local" channels in HD, and in fact most of the SD channels barely come in.



If I didn't have HD locals over satellite, I wouldn't be watching them much, if at all It's in their best interest to get in as many homes as possible, and they should be happy that Sat providers are willing to help deliver their signal, rather than trying to extort money from them.

My father is well over 200 miles from the same "locals", though there is another major market less than 120 miles in the other direction.

[Swoop]

It's in their best interest to get in as many homes as possible, and they should be happy that Sat providers are willing to help deliver their signal, rather than trying to extort money from them.

You hit the nail on the head with that statement. The problem is that these local stations and the people who own and run them have gotten lazy and sorry off of the milk cow that is their current monopoly and rather than do things to try to grow their viewship/customer base, they take the opposite approach and piss everyone off.

This worked fine in the past because they had no competition. Now there is competition and those locals are feeling the pain and it appears that alot of them rather than adapting and changing with the times would rather try to extort as much money anyway they can before they go under.

[dfergie]

For the Multichannel take (if you missed it in the Multichannel forum)
by John Eggerton -- Multichannel News, February 25, 2009

WASHINGTON — Armed with market-coverage maps, Dish Network chairman Charlie Ergen sat down with reporters last week for a breakfast briefing here before his testimony on reauthorization of the Satellite Home Viewer Extension and Reauthorization Act, the bill that sets the rules of the road for satellite carriage of local TV station

Source & More:
Multichannel New

s

[HDRoberts]

Wow, interesting statement in the mutichannel article

And you'd have ongoing costs of about $250,000 a year to import the signal via fiber to your uplinks.

Is that per station or per market. Either way, that's a lot.

[Totoro]

By Ira Teinowitz


...to end any need for them to air stations that rebroadcast national shopping or religious channels without any local content...


Source & More:
Tvweek.com

It would be great if they could free up that bandwidth for something useful. Hopefully it won't be more PPV.

[jacobm69]

When exactly are they supposed to decide if the SHVERA are going to be changed or not?

[dfergie]

By Ira Teinowitz

“With the advent of Internet, it is ludicrous that you can watch anything on the Internet, but you have to watch your own DMA on TV,” Charles W. Ergen, president-CEO of DISH Network Corporation, told the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Source & More:
tvweek.com

[dishcomm]

Here is another article.

Ergen: SHVERA Reforms Could Lead To Universal Local-Into-Local By 2010

Dish Network chief talks to Congress about satellite reforms

By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 2/24/2009 8:18:18 AM MT

"The digital age has arrived," says Dish Network Chairman Charlie Ergen, "and the laws need to catch up." That would include not making satellite operators pay to carry any TV stations or, absent that, Congress coming up with a single retransmission consent rate that applies to all broadcasters and pay TV providers. It also means revamping the satellite carriage regime and what constitutes a local signal.

"Treat a monopoly like a monopoly," says Ergen. "Satellite providers already pay a fixed, per-subscriber copyright royalty rate, and we see no reason why a similar concept can't work for retransmission consent."

In prepared testimony for a House hearing on reauthorizing the Satellite Home Viewer Extension and Reauthorization Act (SHVERA), Ergen listed four fixes he says should be made in the law, which essentially provides the rules of the road for satellite delivery of local TV station signals.

Those fixes, says Ergen, would address the problems of 1) consumers unable to get local news and sports from their home state because of the way markets are configured (almost half cross state lines, according to one satellite lobbyist); 2) rural communities not having all four major nets; 3) retrans fights that deprive local consumers of station signals, and 4) must-carry stations with little or no local content, but which satellite operators are required to carry.

Ergen argues that pay TV providers should be able to import neighboring broadcast stations, with consumers getting to make the call about what local means.

For example, in a market that straddles two states, the ABC affiliate may carry local news, or the games of the college in one state, while viewers in that split market would prefer to get the games of a nearby college that happens to be in an adjacent market.

Ergen says that Dish provides local-into-local service in 178 of Nielsen's 210 markets, or about 97% of TV households. In most of the rest, he says, there are three or fewer network affiliates, which makes it uneconomical to serve because viewers won't want the service it is missing, say, the local NBC affiliate, and DISH is prevented from important a nearby NBC affiliate.

To help remedy that, he says, Congress should step in and allow pay TV providers to import stations from adjacent markets. "If broadcasters won't invest in their local communities," he argues, "pay-TV providers should be able to treat a nearby affiliate as the local affiliate."

At a press conference with reporters before his appearance before the House Communications, Tech & Internet Subcommittee, Ergen said that if Congress institute his suggested broad reforms, that the marketplace would drive either his company, or competitor DirecTV to serve virtually all those 210 markets, and by as early as next year. "I would predict that, based on what we're proposing, it is highly likely that you would get all 210 DMA's with all the DBS players without it being mandated by Congress, and you would probably get it by 2010."

Source & More:
broadcastingcable.com

The $64k question is "what is local"?
I grew up in NJ. My hometown is in th NYC DMA. Did we get "local" content? NO. As far as news and local sports coverage NJ was all but ignored. Quite frankly so was the two counties ion PA and Fairfield County in Ct. All local content was focused on NYC and Long Island.
The DAM in which I reside here is an NC DMA. But there are locations 70 miles away in SC that are within the boundaries of the DMA here. DO they get "local' content? Hell no.
That said, this nonsense of the DMA has to go. If one looks at a DMA map there are DMA's that make no sense at all. In fact I challenge anyone to tell me just exactly what criteria are used to form a DMA.
Anyway it just seems to me that TV ius stuck in the 50's
This idea oif protecting territories like little fiefdoms is nuts.
DO braodcasters really think that advertising is why people watch what thye watch. Oh yeah, how much local advertising really gets customers in through the door. And suppose it did. So what. Should that be the only reason why someone in the far flung reaches of a DMA or one who lives in a DMA where there are less than the 4 major nets gets the shaft? Or what about the DMA's that are so large in geographic size that those who live on the fringes of that DMA have no ties to the city where the stations are coming from?
Tell ya what. I can watch all the news clips I want from other stations across the country over the internet anyway.
I live in NC. Here's an example.

2 Dead In NYC Fire; FDNY Calls It Suspicious - wcbstv.com

SO all ya gotta do is get the ad out of the way and you see the entire story.
No this is not the entire broadcast but therre are so many clips on these sites you can almost watch the entire newcast.
So why can't I watch the whole thing. I am seeing the ads.

New York News, Weather, Sports & Traffic - WCBSTV.com

[dfergie]

Guys please don't quote full article and give source ok (I don't know how avs gets away with it...)copyright rules...

[dishcomm]

You hit the nail on the head with that statement. The problem is that these local stations and the people who own and run them have gotten lazy and sorry off of the milk cow that is their current monopoly and rather than do things to try to grow their viewship/customer base, they take the opposite approach and piss everyone off.

This worked fine in the past because they had no competition. Now there is competition and those locals are feeling the pain and it appears that alot of them rather than adapting and changing with the times would rather try to extort as much money anyway they can before they go under.

here's an example of what may be a trend. The local Fox affilaite here owns the Fox affiliate in a neighboring DMA. The newscasts are done in the studios here. Same anchors do both shows. One newscast deals with news here. The other for news there. The company saves all around. The space, studios, equipment and talent.
Heck radio has gotten farther and farther away form local content.
Most stations in small markets are on "live assist" All of the music is pre loaded and voiceovers done in advance. All that is reuired is a couple of engineers to run the place and the talent thta does the news and voice overs comes in and does their thing. A friend of mine did this at a nearby christina radio staion. He was the only "DJ". Anyone listening who doesn't know. would say "how can this guy work all these hours"? He doesn't. The intros and outros for the playlists are done ahead of time. It just sounds like it's being done live.
Anyway, that's kinda off toipic. But it does serve as an example of how the broadcasting business is changing.