Dish about to lose even MORE local channels

[Sponge14]

So I was checking the website for my local news station (KTEN Home), and this notice was at the top:

DISH NETWORK MAY LOSE CARRIAGE OF KTEN(TV) [Click here for details]

"DISH NETWORK MAY LOSE CARRIAGE OF KTEN(TV) [Click here for details]"

To DISH Network Subscriber:
KTEN(TV)'s carriage rights with the DISH Network expire at 11:59:59 PM on December 31, 2008. Our Station has been in negotiations with DISH in an attempt to reach a new agreement. Unfortunately, those negotiations have not yet been successful.
We will keep you fully informed. Here are the FACTS:

• In addition to our NBC programming, our station also broadcasts local Texoma CW as a digital multicast which DISH is refusing to carry. We believe DISH should be willing to provide you with our local CW programming. Our request is reasonable and will provide you with more programming options.
• We will continue to work diligently in the hope that DISH will complete an agreement for carriage of KTEN(TV).

Our programs include your favorite news, weather , sports, and entertainment programs, including the Super Bowl on February 1 and Oprah, Dr. Phil, Wheel of Fortune, The Office, Heroes, 30 Rock and many others, along with local specials election coverage. You may continue to watch these and other great programs of KTEN(TV) and Texoma CW by alternative means. Your choices include:

• Free, over-the-air reception directly from the Station
• Your local cable system
• In some cases, your local telephone company.

We will keep you fully informed of the status of our negotiations and we regret any inconvenience DISH may cause you.
If you should have any further questions or comments, please feel free to call us at 1-800-375.5836.
Or email us at DBS@kten.com.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What is the deal with Dish, I can't believe that all of these local stations are being too greedy in their demands, I am now starting to believe it is the other way around. Dish is making $5 for my local channels, that is a hell of a lot less then the highest demands I have heard of, at 60 cents a subscriber.

Go get 'em Dish, hold out on these small town news stations that we depend on in times of emergency with winter upon us now, and just having left tornado season.

 

[pabeader]

Losing more locals!!!

Oh Happy day!!!

A Christmas present for me from the universe!!!

 

[bayoufats]

I have a locals related question I hope someone on the forum can answer. I currently can't get my locals over ther air, (and of course Dish doesn't carry them) because I live a little too far from the transmission tower. My question is when they switch to digital, will I like have a better chance to pick up the signal over the air, or a lesser chance, or will it be about the same. I guess what I am asking is whether or not the digital signal is stronger and basically covers more distants than the analog signal?

 

[pabeader]

the question is do you get something over the air? even a really snowt picture? if so, then there is a good chance that digital will work.

if the picture shows a lot of ghosting, then there might be trouble.

 

[yourbeliefs]

More great news.

 

[AdamGott]

I have a locals related question I hope someone on the forum can answer. I currently can't get my locals over ther air, (and of course Dish doesn't carry them) because I live a little too far from the transmission tower. My question is when they switch to digital, will I like have a better chance to pick up the signal over the air, or a lesser chance, or will it be about the same. I guess what I am asking is whether or not the digital signal is stronger and basically covers more distants than the analog signal?

It depends on a lot of things so there is no good answer for you. For one, our locals are using a lot less power when transmitting their digital signal (as compared to the analog signal).

I like digital better for one reason - you either get it or you don't. While it's not quite as black and white as this it is much better than the old analog days. Fidget with the antenna as much as possible and still you get ghosting (from reflected/delayed transmissions) and lots of other nasty stuff. Digital is much easier to lock on and get a great signal. You either get it or you don't (although there is a small mid-point in which you get tons of breakups and signal loss).

 

[osu1991]

This is probably why Dish held off on the HD launch of Ada/Sherman locals. This does surprise me though that Texoma CW would be a problem as Dish gets the FOX subchannel from KXII, Although they don't get the MyNet subchannel from KXII. I guess they can't give the Miami CW anymore either because of the Distants case. I actually use my office address for my mom's house at Pontotoc, so she gets the Tulsa channels but we get both KTEN and KXII fine OTA. We can get the Dallas stations in the evening.

 

[Juan]

Sounds like they want e* to carry a sub channel

 

[Sponge14]

This is probably why Dish held off on the HD launch of Ada/Sherman locals. This does surprise me though that Texoma CW would be a problem as Dish gets the FOX subchannel from KXII, Although they don't get the MyNet subchannel from KXII. I guess they can't give the Miami CW anymore either because of the Distants case. I actually use my office address for my mom's house at Pontotoc, so she gets the Tulsa channels but we get both KTEN and KXII fine OTA. We can get the Dallas stations in the evening.

Ahh that's a good point about our HD locals. I was under the impression that we would have them in October, but this would be a good reason why I don't have them yet. It's a good thing I live in 2 markets right now... Not sure how that happened, but I get Dallas and Sherman/Ada locals.

 

[cparker]

I don't understand why so many people jump to the conclusion that Dish must be the "bad guy" here. Just because your local station SAYS their requests are reasonable doesn't mean they ARE reasonable. They may be reasonable to THEM, but they're trying to make money just like Dish is.

How about this..... how about all local stations allow dish to carry their programming for FREE!
I mean... I can get it using an antenna and THAT's for free. So getting it from Dish is really just a convenience, right? A convenience for which I pay Dish a certain amount of money. And by giving Dish the signal for free, they are expanding their local advertisers' exposure at no additional cost to the station. So... charge teh ADVERTISERS more! Sounds reasonable to me.

Sounds reasonable to ME. I think the local stations are putting the squeeze on Dish (and probably other carriers as well) to try to milk a few more dollars. Try telling your local station that you don't appreciate their attempts to extort money from you by making someone else look like the bad guy. Tell them they should be giving the signal to Dish for free because everyone else in your area with an antenna gets it for free.

See how far that gets ya.

Sounds reasonable though, doesn't it?

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

I don't understand why so many people jump to the conclusion that Dish must be the "bad guy" here. Just because your local station SAYS their requests are reasonable doesn't mean they ARE reasonable. They may be reasonable to THEM, but they're trying to make money just like Dish is.

How about this..... how about all local stations allow dish to carry their programming for FREE!

I don't consisder Dish the bad guy in this (and note this is happening to other cable companies and even DirecTV, but its not widely in the news.)

Figure it this way...

Dish charges $5.99 a month. Here in Connecticut they carry 9 SD Local channels plus 4 HD local channels.

Thats about 66 cents a channel that Dish makes on each channel.

Some of these channels want up to 60 cents a month for Dish to carry their signal.

Now figure out the costs of getting the local channels signal and backhauling it via fiber lines (and then how much more it costs for the HD version which I have not even factored into the price)

Ok so now we have got the stations from the local station to Dish Networks uplink center. Now we need to process the signal and encode the signal and properly insert it so that it broadcasts on the correct transponder, that all costs money.

Next we need to beam this signal out from a huge dish to a satellite 22,500 miles in the sky. It takes a lot of electricity to do this.

BTW that satellite cost Dish Network a few hundred million dollars.

From that 6 cents how much profit did Dish make? The answer is NONE they sell locals at a loss because people want their locals. If Dish removed all the locals and used all the transponders used by locals for national television signals they could earn many many millions of dollars showing national programming. But instead they go out and rebroadcast free signals that many viewers who live in the stations area can't pick up.

Satellite is doing the stations a favor by carrying their signal.

Without having their signals on satellite the stations have much less viewers which in turn means lower ads earnings.

These TV stations want to get paid plus have all the extra eyeballs from satellite watching and then they make more money twice.

It really isn't fair, and if you look around its not only Dish Network that having this problem, its happening to cable companies and even DirecTV.

The television companies don't care how much you pay for your service, they just want you to pay. They want you to pay for a signal you should be getting for free. There is something wrong with this picture.

 

[jdmacor]

What is the deal with Dish, I can't believe that all of these local stations are being too greedy in their demands, I am now starting to believe it is the other way around. Dish is making $5 for my local channels, that is a hell of a lot less then the highest demands I have heard of, at 60 cents a subscriber.

Let me get this straight; because more than one local affiliate is getting dropped, you automatically assume the problem must be Dish?... I am not following that logic. Why couldn't it be more of a 'monkey see - monkey do' type situation. Except in this case, the monkeys are actually idiot affiliate CEOs who believe that their product is suddenly worth more than the going rate of 20 or so cents per sub, which is already ridiculously above the fair market rate of FREE!!!!

And Dish is being paid for the convenience THEY offer YOU, which should have nothing to do with the crummy local weather reports and even lamer 'public interest stories.' Dish is incurring all of the costs, and now they are expected to incur more for the honor of retransmitting a free signal!!

 

[KAB]

What is the deal with Dish, I can't believe that all of these local stations are being too greedy in their demands,

Believe it!!!!!

 

[Mitch29532]

Very well said Scott, I agree with you 100%. Just shut down all the locals and see what they have to say about it.

 

[jdmacor]

Scott, the way you put it was much calmer and clearer than the way I shouted it, although I feel like you should have worked the word monkey into your explanation as well... Just some constructive criticism for ya.

 

[Curtis0620]

Very well said Scott, I agree with you 100%. Just shut down all the locals and see what they have to say about it.

I'm sure nobody will switch providers.

 

[HDRoberts]

Sounds like they want e* to carry a sub channel

That's what it sounds like to me. Not a money issue for a change.

This one I see both sides. The net want's its sub channel with some decent network programming carried. But Dish probably sees this as a slippery slope. What's to stop some other local affiliate from demanding that their Podunk little local weather sub channel be carried? Or another one wanting RTN carried?

Besides Alaska and Hawaii PBS sub channels (which I think are carried by government mandate), are there other sub channels carried by Dish?

 

[wyattg]

This has been happening for YEARS

4 or 5 years ago I worked for a small cable company in a Sacramento Suburb and when the Kings went to a local channel for many games, the local channel wanted I think it was 10 or 15 cents a subscriber, knowing that people wanted the Kings and ABC programming. Our system ended up pulling the channel I believe we pulled in the Chico station as a big FU to the local station. No Kings but most of the calls dropped off as the PrimeTime Programming was restored.

Internally the thought processes was the same, we or providing you with viewers who you show ADs you sold to local businesses, that is your compensation.

 

[ekilgus]

Not likely to happen but what if Dish, Direct, cable and the other providers got to together and demanded that the local stations PAY THEM to retransmit their signals giving the reason that the local stations are unable or unwilling to do what is necessary to insure that all viewers in their DMA can receive their signal?

The argument could be made that the locals are essentially charging those in their DMA that cannot receive their signal via antenna and the retransmitters are simply providing a service the locals will not.

In doing so this benefits the local stations greatly by increasing viewership and consequently increased advertising dollars. Accordingly, it is the local stations that should be paying Dish, Direct, etc. for retransmitting their signals.

I think we all know what would happen if all retransmitters refused to pay to carry locals.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

If people can't receive their locals now and rely on cable and satellite to deliver to them what the TV stations are supposed to deliver via OTA, wait until February 17th.

Lots of people will no longer be able to get a signal from the stations.

A lot of people (still) today watch OTA stations that are full of ghosts or snow, but with Digital television there are no ghosts or snow, the way Digital works is eaither you get the signal or you don't. There is no in between.

Cable and Satellite is helping broadcasters reach their audience.