Dish and Freedom Corp disagreement heats up

[wkomorow]

I assume this applies to other Freedom Corp stations -


Albany Channel 6's manager has been on air telling viewers that Dish and CBS6 have been in negotiation for the HD signal for a while, but Dish executives do not seem to want to cut a deal. As a result, CBS6 will be pulling their SD signal as well as the local CW soon unless Dish agrees to carry the HD signal.

June 13th may be very interesting if they pull their signal from Dish and many people with those special HD antennas (7+ UFH) do not realize that 6's digital signal is moving from channel 39 to a low VHF frequency (back to 6).

[Raymie]

Here we go! June brought to you by the letter F.

[flampher]

I saw that same thing on their hd off air broadcast this afternoon.

[wkomorow]

I wonder if Freedom's SD retrans is up, or if Freedom is trying to make a point with Dish over HD?

[Raymie]

Just sent now to Freedom GMs and other people in the company:

5 June 2009

Dear Mr. Costa, Mr. Bassett, Mr. Beaulieu, Mr. Lutton, Mr. Kelley, Mr. Furlong, Mr. Kennedy, and Mrs. Wade:

The clouds are clearly on the horizon for Dish Network customers. With missing HD signals and now threats of the SD signals going away too, the Freedom Communications television portfolio is at risk of losing an audience. These rate squabbles are bad for everyone; the station loses viewership and ultimately advertiser money, while Dish loses subscribers due to the fact that their markets can't get their CBS, ABC, and/or The CW. If Freedom's stations are pulled, this will mark two actively running retransmission consent disputes for Dish Network. The first, with Fisher Communications, has removed the signals of TV stations from Boise to Seattle, from Portland to Bakersfield. If KTVL Medford is pulled, it means that the entire state of Oregon will be affected by one of the two retransmission consent disputes. The television advertising market is as low as it ever has been...and do you want to lose advertisers and their precious revenue? Well, that might just happen given the way Dish is doing this. I'm Raymie Humbert, the 14-year-old Arizona-based editor of the EchoStar Knowledge Base News Monitor, a Dish Network news site.
I would like to see these stations somehow return to Dish Network. I would also like information on what Dish is offering and what you are countering back with if possible, as well as the date you are going to pull your channels if there is no compromise; I'd also like the ability to post this information to the public. Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,
Raymie Humbert
EchoStar Knowledge Base

[wkomorow]

Just sent now to Freedom GMs and other people in the company:

5 June 2009

Dear Mr. Costa, Mr. Bassett, Mr. Beaulieu, Mr. Lutton, Mr. Kelley, Mr. Furlong, Mr. Kennedy, and Mrs. Wade:

The clouds are clearly on the horizon for Dish Network customers. With missing HD signals and now threats of the SD signals going away too, the Freedom Communications television portfolio is at risk of losing an audience. These rate squabbles are bad for everyone; the station loses viewership and ultimately advertiser money, while Dish loses subscribers due to the fact that their markets can't get their CBS, ABC, and/or The CW. If Freedom's stations are pulled, this will mark two actively running retransmission consent disputes for Dish Network. The first, with Fisher Communications, has removed the signals of TV stations from Boise to Seattle, from Portland to Bakersfield. If KTVL Medford is pulled, it means that the entire state of Oregon will be affected by one of the two retransmission consent disputes. The television advertising market is as low as it ever has been...and do you want to lose advertisers and their precious revenue? Well, that might just happen given the way Dish is doing this. I'm Raymie Humbert, the 14-year-old Arizona-based editor of the EchoStar Knowledge Base News Monitor, a Dish Network news site.
I would like to see these stations somehow return to Dish Network. I would also like information on what Dish is offering and what you are countering back with if possible, as well as the date you are going to pull your channels if there is no compromise; I'd also like the ability to post this information to the public. Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,
Raymie Humbert
EchoStar Knowledge Base

Nicely worded, hope you get I reply, I have written several times and never got a response. I think you would also need permission from Dish to publish any contract negotiations. Given their current financial problems, I am very surprised Freedom did not accept what Dish was offering. In perspective, Dish has agreements with thousands of stations and problems with less than maybe 1/2 of 1 percent of them - but it is a pain when the 1/2 of 1 percent includes a station that you want.

[whatchel1]

Just sent now to Freedom GMs and other people in the company:

5 June 2009

Dear Mr. Costa, Mr. Bassett, Mr. Beaulieu, Mr. Lutton, Mr. Kelley, Mr. Furlong, Mr. Kennedy, and Mrs. Wade:

The clouds are clearly on the horizon for Dish Network customers. With missing HD signals and now threats of the SD signals going away too, the Freedom Communications television portfolio is at risk of losing an audience. These rate squabbles are bad for everyone; the station loses viewership and ultimately advertiser money, while Dish loses subscribers due to the fact that their markets can't get their CBS, ABC, and/or The CW. If Freedom's stations are pulled, this will mark two actively running retransmission consent disputes for Dish Network. The first, with Fisher Communications, has removed the signals of TV stations from Boise to Seattle, from Portland to Bakersfield. If KTVL Medford is pulled, it means that the entire state of Oregon will be affected by one of the two retransmission consent disputes. The television advertising market is as low as it ever has been...and do you want to lose advertisers and their precious revenue? Well, that might just happen given the way Dish is doing this. I'm Raymie Humbert, the 14-year-old Arizona-based editor of the EchoStar Knowledge Base News Monitor, a Dish Network news site.
I would like to see these stations somehow return to Dish Network. I would also like information on what Dish is offering and what you are countering back with if possible, as well as the date you are going to pull your channels if there is no compromise; I'd also like the ability to post this information to the public. Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,
Raymie Humbert
EchoStar Knowledge Base

It may be related to the .2 channel is a CW and that E* doesn't want to carry it now. Freedom may be pushing for that. Now if all the of F's stations are being pulled across the country then it has to do with contract negotiations for all the secondary channels to be carried and E* can't do that yet. Do you know if it is all the F stations or just the Albany station? The Albany station's .2 is a This TV net Which I don't believe that E* carries anywhere.

[Raymie]

It's the entire chain of stations.

[wkomorow]

It may be related to the .2 channel is a CW and that E* doesn't want to carry it now. Freedom may be pushing for that. Now if all the of F's stations are being pulled across the country then it has to do with contract negotiations for all the secondary channels to be carried and E* can't do that yet. Do you know if it is all the F stations or just the Albany station? The Albany station's .2 is a This TV net Which I don't believe that E* carries anywhere.

CW in Albany is on its own primary frequency channel - 45 and not a digital sub-station and is currently carried in SD on Dish. CBS6 does carry the this network on its .2, but this is not owned by Freedom.

[david_jr]

I find it interesting that Freedom thinks that Dish is being unreasonable. While WTEN (ABC), WNYT (NBC) and WXXA (Fox) all have agreements with Dish for HD carriage and WRGB (CBS) is the only holdout, they say that Dish is unreasonable. I think that most here would agree that it is Freedom that is being unreasonable. I have not seen the TV spot. Who is speaking and is there an email address to write to?