I think this might be because by the time technology came around for spot beams, Dish was pretty much done with "major" markets and moving on to minor and semi-major markets. I think the utilization of spot beams is where they started going for higher compression because of the varying number of locals in different cities. If a particular beam serves two cities but together they have one more than ideal number of channels for that transponder, they may well push the extra compression so they don't have to stuff a LiL channel somewhere else like a ConUS transponder. Market size might have something to do with it, but it is probably just less than ideal conditions such as where the spots are and LiL channel counts in each beam.
But the new spot beams were designed after that point. furthermore, high population and the economies are related. Perhaps a good example was his renewal of LA local Fox 11 a few years ago. It was a pretty public dispute because Fox wanted lots of money, and I remember that it was related to Fox demanding that Dish take another one of those Fox owned channels (possibly Fox Reality, I'm not sure). KTTV LA Fox 11 crawled the expected nasty rant against Dish.
Now, in smaller markets, Charlie has universally balked at such demands and let a LIL, even a big affiliate, be dropped. But I knew Charlie was gonna have to pay because he would have been flooded with calls and a mass exodus to Direct or even back to cable. I just knew he wouldn't dare allow a major LA LIL to be dropped (excluding the CBS/Viacom stations drop because Congress was in session reviewing LIL legislation and Ergan wanted to make a point with Congress, and it worked). In the past he had given discounts for LIL because a major affiliate was missing, and even installed OTA antennas in some markets so his subs could still view that local that was dropped form the satellite. Could you imagine the red ink if he applied that to Los Angeles?
Sure enough, on the subsequent Charlie Chat, Jim announces a new channel in the AT tier, (
the FOX owned channel), and Charlie says,
"Yeah, that was a lot of money. I know it cost us a lot of money, anyway" he said much to his chagrin. He continued with a somewhat glum tone looking at his peanut gallery,
"Well, it was part of renewing our agreement with the local Fox station in Los Angeles, and that was a lot money, too.!"
While the LIL's PQ in big cities surely leave something to be desired, we just don't get the kinds of complaints on this board form big city dwellers that we do from our good citizens in the less populated parts of the country, and again, the Los Angeles/southern California area has the highest penetration of satellite in the country. And there are dishes (either Direct or Dish) EVERYWHERE around here!.
I may be wrong, but I still believe it is all about the high population and penetration and the economies that affect LIL PQ.
