Question: As a Stock holder of Echostar I do not see why Dish would want to tie up $20 Million is escrow forever. Do they have to follow it if they just cut off all the stations in question?
EchoStar is a publicly held company, they have to try to make a profit. I could not find a full copy of the bill which includes the fine print. Looking at the summary above, it looks like they do not have to follow this law if it is passed as it would be more profitable to just turn off the stations and save $20 million.
I'm sure at least half of the current DNS subscribers would be more than willing to make a one-time $50 investment to keep their stations.
Hopefully I'm not getting too carried away here, but to those willing to listen, there are a few overlooked points I'd like to interject:
DiSH's so-called "violation" of the "law" has been under sheer demand by their customers. The comment by Rep. Cannon about E* using their customers as "human shields" is nothing short of hatred toward millions of Americans. While I'm glad to not personally be involved in legal action over this issue, I've always been appreciative of E*'s continual efforts, in a class-action sort of way, to maintain their customers' access and choices of broadcast stations. Not to start any kind of E vs. D debate, but from a broadcast channel perspective, D* has always let consumers down with their lack of Superstations, neglect to offer any immediate WB replacement upon WGN dropping it, and their generally indifferent attitude on DNS and probably LIL as well. Heck, D* even stalled on providing a western feed of FOX after dropping PT24. On the other hand, I must admit, E*'s feed of KTTV did have rather severe problems up until the time D* added the station.
That reminds me of a question I thought of in this whole thing, is FOX even officially considered a network by the FCC? It seems to me that for some reason it is, while WB/UPN and their sucessors never were. I know that networks other than the "big 3" are prohibited from airing more than a certain number of hours per week in primetime. Perhaps FOX does qualify as a network because they program 7 nights a week or something else to that effect. Someone else will probably shed more light on this if anyone deems it relevant.
Anyway, considering their offerings in broadcast stations, I've never considered D* a viable option and was reluctant to even go with DiSH until I was confident that I'd be able to get all six of the major commercial stations from NYC. Without recieving all stations from a single DMA, you lose the ability to view many syndicated programs. Convieniently, Dish Nets East & West were launched just as I was moving to a location where cable was unavailable and OTA offerings were sparse, leaving DiSH and C-Band as the only real choices. I went with DiSH, and even so, I still missed out on syndicated shows that didn't clear DMA #1 and aired on either KCAL or KCOP in L.A. Sure, it wasn't a great loss, but it irked me once in a while.
Of course distants aren't a "necessity", except in the sense of viewing their programing, where viewers either can't or won't watch locals. As far as national programming goes, within the realm of satellite TV, distants neither are so much a "convienence" as they are a practicality. Think about it. For those who indeed receive no over the air reception, without their East and West feeds, twice as many receivers would need to be purchased in order to record the same number of simultainious primetime shows, be it two, four, or six. Granted, if you reside in a major city and can receive the networks by antenna or cable without the need for receivers, this task would require twice the number of VCRs/DVRs, but for rural residents, this savings is offset by the need to purchase a satellite system and subscription, and face it, when most of us got into this, a maximum of two receivers was the norm.
It's better than nothing, and I'm grateful something appears to be being done, but this new bill is far from perfect. For some reason it reminds me of when the tobacco companies were required to pay into a settlement to fund anti-smoking campaigns, then complained when the campaign ended up not so much discouraging smoking as criminalizing the tobacco companies, to no particular benefit. OK, so in that case, maybe they had it coming. What I'm trying to say is that any attempt to say that E* is a criminal which its customers are the victims of is a gross misrepresentation. While there are some newbies in white areas who may be oblivious to the whole situation, I believe there are a large number of "unqualified" people who would be glad to get around the law. Considering the nature of the situation, I think it's an amazingly high level of compliance with the law if the figures I heard are correct regarding ~75-80% being fully within the law, or at least "appearing" to be. I think it's safe to assume that many more people would subscribe to distants if they were permitted to. I can tell you that without distants and superstations, I have little interest in satellite TV. Obviously, it's understandable that if it's known that 20% are unlawful, trouble would arise in the courts, but any unbiased consumer has to admire DiSH for making every effort to give the public what they want. Clearly, this law does nothing more than protect an isolated group of special intrests while depriving society of a valuable asset.
Now, this idea of compensating the local affiliates is ridiculous in a way, but makes more sense in solving the dilemma than has anything else so far. It's like saying that if I choose to shop at one supermarket, I should have to pay a penalty to the one across the street for not shopping there. OK, so someone will come along and point out that these affiliates are to have the exclusive rights to broadcast their given programming in their DMAs. Well, fine, but basically, it's the same logic.
While I'm at it, let me reiterate to some of the posters on other threads, a point that Tony made recently: The SHVA and its successors are not the "evil" laws resricting our channels, but rather the permissive law under which we are allowed to have DNS at all.
However, in order for the SHVA to be needed in the first place, it must be that it's effect is to circumvent presumably actually-evil (well, restrictive to the public at large) laws. I've not fully studied it lately, but I believe it falls under copyright restrictions.
By the way, it's nice to see that a lot of you guys are still around whom I remember from when I lurked the E* Usenet group years ago. Keep up the good work, gentlemen.
OK, so, the locals are to be compensated if their market is not carried, and distants are offered in their place. This ensures the stations get the most they're entitled to, but at the same time, discourages DiSH from adding the market, which, to a point, harms rural customers who *want* the locals, though of course helps those that prefer distants.
Let me add that I find it quite deluded that anyone should be able to stop a television provider--which is operating, in terms of their means of transmission and such, according to all regulations--from merely taking a signal which is broadcast freely over the airwaves, and retransmitting it to viewers who happen to be outside of that signal's range. To me, anything broadcast unencrypted over the air should be considered public domain.
Even more warped is the very concept of retransmission consent, especially within a station's DMA. Let me get this right. A station can charge money to, for instance, a cable company, for carrying their signal, and providing the signal to viewers who could not otherwise receive it, while at the same time, the station is setting their advertising rates based on inclusion of these viewers, whether or not they can receive the station, and even including cases in which the station may be willfully preventing their reception?!? If I understand correctly, retransmission consent is simply the station squeezing money out of the cable or sat providers because they can. This, to me, amounts to blackmail, extortion, and dishonest sales tactics to advertisers. I realize that all of these companies, be it the stations or anyone else involved, are, much of the time, just doing what they need to in order to stay in business, but if this is how it is, they really ought to change their business model.
To make what may be my one actual useful point in all of this, assuming that "fairness" constitutes providing the local affiliate with impilied viewership (as in, no access to alternatives, whether you end up watching the local or not) or better yet, the effect of actual viewership, the only definatively fair remedy in this situation would be for the stations to provide E* with copies of each commercial spot they'll be running each day. E* can then download the content to receivers, or include support for non-DVR models by placing them in a repetitive stream like the program guide data. In my estimation, the average station doesn't run more than about 5-10 minutes of unique local paid commercials each day. Viewers would then be required to play through the contained local ad spots before being able to tune into a protected program on a distant station. I guess this still doesn't provide sufficient exposure for all of the infomercials that stations are airing, but DiSH could create channels that air these continuously, and stick them in between the distants in the lineup.
What else am I leaving out? Is it against the law to watch syndicated programming if no station has purchased the rights to it in my DMA? If so, I guess DiSH would have to make such shows PPV. There you go. I think I've covered everything. Now, lawmakers and E* just need to come to a concensus that will allow us to subscribe to as many distants as we want, and hopefully put some of the more popular stations around the country on CONUS beams. Wow, all of this just so I can watch the news from another town.
In conclusion, congratulations to everyone here who made a difference, to Washington for at least doing more than I'd be inclined to expect, and to Charlie for never giving up the fight. Now let's make sure the bill passes. Local and DNS for everyone!
It's only TV, folks. Still, distants are a nice thing to have. I thank God for them, and wish I had more. Peace.