As a pioneer of Alaskan satellite reception, I feel qualified to speak on this subject.
Take a look at my website:
www.global-cm.net for a full history of what I did in the 1970s and 1980s while living there.
And visit my Free To Air Charts, which also include an Asia-Pacific section that may be helpful in places around the Aleutians, Nome and northwestern Alaska. I built a cable system about 1700 miles west of Anchorage, at the Kupol Gold Mine in Far East Russia---so have hard-to-find local knowledge of Russian and Asia-Pacific signals that will work in some areas.
You already have competition for Free To Air systems in south-central Alaska, especially in Anchorage and on the Kenai Peninsula. John MacPherson at Satellite Alaska is an old friend, and can supply C-band as well as large diameter Ku-band antennas that he brings in by ocean container to Anchorage. Pero Marinkovski (Pero's Satellite in Soldotna) has extensive experience with the foreign language market via 97 West and others.
We can suggest a preprogrammed MPEG-4 receiver called the Manhattan RS-1933, which is customized with channels already in place. Excellent for the various Alaskan radio and TV signals from 139 West, the "secret" radio signals on same satellite, and other satellites in your region. While low on your southwestern horizon, you might want to peek at 140 East for the Russian signals, which may be of great interest to many Alaskan natives of Russian extraction.
There are hundreds of C-band antennas installed in the 1980s and 1990s across the state, and many are probably not being used right now. A great place to start, and piggy-back a free to air receiver, and bring those systems back to life, either using the previous receiver as a dish positioning device, or adding a V-Box or one of its close cousins to move the dish. Since you have probably seen more than your share of 4, 6 and 8 foot offsets for DirecTV, if any of those are surplus, you could look at my website's main page for a primer on converting offset dishes for multiple satellite reception of Ku-band signals. Stronger satellites such as 121 West C-band could be easily received with an eight foot offset and a conical scalar adapter with C-band LNBF or C-band feedhorn and LNB. Perhaps you might find a few of those channels on a six footer, too.
Canada still provides a number of free to air channels on C-band. Ku-band is possible too, for those with access to a Canadian address---Shaw Direct subscription is entirely possible with a larger offset (4 to 6 feet or more).
A 10 to 12 foot C-band antenna should work anywhere in the state of Alaska. It's just been my experience that severe winter storms in the northern and western parts of the state that are on the ocean can make short life of a mesh antenna. We shall soon have replacement mesh panels available from a new facility in Michigan, so if you need to bandage a dish with an otherwise salvagable framework, that could be a possibility. Look for Manhattan Digital to finally have knockdown mesh antennas that ship at a reasonable price by late spring. We've been promising it for a year, but the light is now at the end of the tunnel. In other words---you will soon have all of the tools necessary to expand your new FTA business in Alaska, even if you are based on Kodiak Island.