Bschneider said:I'll give you the second and third.. however, Seattle being on the west coast has nothing to do with it.. IF Seattle had an O&O, it would have been the list also.
I assure you if Seattle had both an O&O Fox station and had more HD customers than Tampa they still wouldn't be on this list because of reason number one as I posted above.
D* still thinks they can get spaceway 2 up and running before November first so they are just going to wait and add much more than the top 12 markets along with as many HD national channels as they see fit. If Spaceway 2 doesn't go up or heaven forbid it doesn't work once up they will only offer the top 12 markets plus additional markets in order via regular spotbeam usage but this would mean no new national HD channels until they can get that second satellite up or get the one that went bad working somehow.
They also have this setup so that if spaceway 2 goes bad they can still use the one big spotbeam method for the Eastern USA which would allow them to offer another 30 or so HD LIL markets that are on the Eastern USA regardless of DMA rankings that might put a western USA city above them. You must remember that its best for D* if spaceway 2 goes bad to offer HD LIL channels to 45 markets just on the Eastern USA compared to offering less than 30 markets if they go by DMA which would include westcoast USA cities.
Again HD LIL channels will bring them money and you must look at this from their point of view. Do you think D* will care that western USA cities won't get HD LIL channels if they can get double the amount of cities on the Eastern USA. Its all about money and throwing away 30 markets just so a few western USA cities won't bitch isn't going to happen no matter what those DMA maps read period. D* follows the DMAs but they mainly focus on how many customers they have for HD in any given market and the growth of that market.