Hearst Television Inc. blacks out DISH customers in 26 markets

Also, they have monopolies on their content. No one else can provide NBC or CBS or ABC content in a given market except the one local station for that network. Monopolies are not free and open markets. I promise you, if MVPDs were free to import locals from another market, we would never see another major network blackout on any MVPD ever again.
Do we really need to revisit how contracts between companies (which the national broadcasters and the locals are) work? It's not just the network feeds, but also the syndicated shows. If I was a local broadcaster and paid to be able to air Wheel of Fortune, why would I want to allow others to show the same content? It dilutes the brand.
 
Do we really need to revisit how contracts between companies (which the national broadcasters and the locals are) work? It's not just the network feeds, but also the syndicated shows. If I was a local broadcaster and paid to be able to air Wheel of Fortune, why would I want to allow others to show the same content? It dilutes the brand.
That's fine, but that is not a free an open market. That means the local broadcaster has a monopoly on Wheel of Fortune just like they have a monopoly on NBC or CBS programming.
 
That's fine, but that is not a free an open market. That means the local broadcaster has a monopoly on Wheel of Fortune just like they have a monopoly on NBC or CBS programming.
Monopoly or exclusivity?

From wiki:
Exclusive rights can be established by law or by contractual obligation, but the scope of enforceability will depend upon the extent to which others are bound by the instrument establishing the exclusive right; thus in the case of contractual rights, only persons that are parties to a contract will be affected by the exclusivity.

Exclusive rights may be granted in property law, copyright law, patent law, in relation to public utilities, or, in some jurisdictions, in other sui generis legislation.
 
I have no dog in this fight, if Hearst would have sent me their press release I would have posted it too.

Local TV is not worth what it use to be with so much of it (including local news) for free on the Internet. I think these stations need to find a better business model.

No dog in this specific fight here either.


That said in my opinion the TV content providers and the likes of Time Warner ,Comcast /NBC Universal ,Sony TV productions ,Cable channels , Hearst,the alphabet networks and CABLE/SAT companies and the OTA locals are all or mostly
all morally bankrupt entities trying to slice up a mindless rubbish TV content pie getting smaller viewership from their legacy delivery channels every year while they extort what they can from each other and the public while IPTV growth and content is on fire.

ATT/DirecTV is the Comcast of the sky now noting I have an AT&T broadband and D*TV bundle after ditching 6 years of inferior Dish TV HD lite rubbish and being a longstanding ATT broadband customer on to IMO more plausible HDTV at DirecTV..

FWIW of Dish TV ,Comcast TV and DirctTV I think D*TV is the lesser of 3 evils based on my own experience going back decades and more recently with 6 years of what IMO was Dish TV HD lite rubbish


There are about 4-5 hours of primetime alphabet network procedural dramas I watch or record to D*TV HR 54 DVR . I like specific OTA sports and the local teams when the picture quality is better than D*TV but not beyond that for the locals .

I grew up when the alphabet networks actually mattered and were possibly managed with more integrity outside of some occasional scandals and maybe they and the NAB valued news and maybe less gratuitously vulgar content standards outside of regulation and the Hays code duration as a public service and not a large profit driver so much as today or at least they pretended to have integrity convincingly or a lot of us were naive .

Outside of maybe 4 primetime alphabet network procedural drama first runs , a few cable channels on D*TV out of maybe 250- 300 I watch a lot of IPTV with the usual suspect multiple IPTV providers up to 4K HDR and my media drives or specific OTA sports and teams when I can get it

Not surprised that traditional TV viewing is declining ,the alphabet networks and a lot of cable channels are deliberately ignorant deserts devoid of much beyond rubbish for the poverty stricken huddled masses , unfortunately revisionist history blind proletariat and millennials and the PC brainwashed snowflakes that all have not plausibly unplugged by now .
 
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Dish has separated the locals price from their package price. Give us the option to drop locals. Then give the locals any price they request and increase the local cost. Very shortly most Dish customers will drop the locals. Dish will satisfy its must carry requirement , the customer will decide what it will pay for, and eventually all the locals will go out of business due to greed. Then the networks will quickly offer national options for their programming and not have to deal with local markets.
 
I did not even know my NBC was gone as I dumped locals with flex pack. with ota antennas I pick three NBC stations including the one in my market.
 
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