DISH to FCC HD Locals Cost too much

[harshness]

4? That really sounds excessive.

Maybe they're trying to poor mouth to get permission to go in jointly with D* on locals.

They're already doing that to some extent.

 

[harshness]

DIRECTV has the capacity in the air. They can do every channel in the US if they wanted to do so.

Apparently not. They supposedly have downlink capacity for about five channels per market. Obviously not all markets have five HD channels, but most have at least five that could be uplinked. I suspect that they lack uplink capacity at this time to support it.

We know that DIRECTV is up against the wall on MPEG2 SD downlink capacity.

Both DBS providers are constantly putting the squeeze on the FCC to give them more slots and this is yet another instance of that pressure.

In the grand scheme, perhaps doing must carry would bring the FCC onto the side of the DBS people in establishing carriage agreements.