Explain a must carry

[andy_horton]

To add a bit on PBS stations - PBS has a national contract that includes most cable providers:
https://www.ncta.com/news-and-events/media-room/article/1798

This contract was renewed this year:
http://www.pbs.org/about/blogs/news...-television-digital-cable-carriage-agreement/

Basically, each PBS station will get to choose four of their digital channels to be carried on cable systems, which can be x.1, x.2, x.3, and x.4 - or could be x.1, x.4, x.5, x.6 - any four of them that they want, so long as all programming carried is noncommercial in nature. Also, cable companies do not have to carry a public broadcasting channel when it duplicates one they already carry for more than 12 hours a day. (Example: If a market has two PBS stations and both stations carry the Create network 24x7 on a subchannel, only one of those must be carried on cable. But if one of them had Create for 12 hours a day and local programming for the other 12 hours (or any other non-duplicated programming) then both would be carried.

I wish we had a deal similar to this for all stations - however I would, for commercial stations, keep the nonduplication rule and add a rule limiting commercial time and paid programming hours so that any channels carried on cable would need to have actual programming not just shopping. I think it would be reasonable to limit program-length commercials to airing between 12 midnight and 6 am on such channels, and limit the amount of commercial breaks to an average of those on the main channel. (So if your x.1 has 20 minutes of commercials per hour, so could all your subchannels.)

In the Chattanooga Tennessee market, there are two create stations. One right across the border in Georgia and both are carried full time as well as both PBS stations

 

[N5XZS]

Not so with KNMD-DT not carry on Directv in Albuquerque's TV market.

 

[FaT Air]

 

[jegrant]

Dish carries KNMD-TV, so if Direct doesn't, I'd say maybe they have trouble receiving it off-air? Or maybe they want/need NM PBS to send it to DTV via fiber? The TV station is responsible for getting a good signal to the various providers. http://www.newmexicopbs.org/about/how-to-receive/

 

[harshness]

Dish carries KNMD-TV, so if Direct doesn't, I'd say maybe they have trouble receiving it off-air?

I've been lead to believe that in a lot of cases, DISH and DIRECTV get their feeds from the same source; whatever it may be.

If one gets it and the other doesn't, it is usually an issue of carriage contracts. These contracts are often made in different date cycles.

 

[N5XZS]

KNMD-DT, transmit from Sandia Crest mountain running at 5.140 Kw erp it should be no problem getting the signal to the Direct TV.

 

[jegrant]

I've been lead to believe that in a lot of cases, DISH and DIRECTV get their feeds from the same source; whatever it may be.

If one gets it and the other doesn't, it is usually an issue of carriage contracts. These contracts are often made in different date cycles.

It could very well be a contract issue, but it doesn't seem to make much sense because PBS stations generally elect Must Carry and therefore do not have a greal deal of contract negotiations.

 

[harshness]

It could very well be a contract issue, but it doesn't seem to make much sense because PBS stations generally elect Must Carry and therefore do not have a greal deal of contract negotiations.

I read a report from CPB that indicates that public television stations currently aren't eligible to enter into retransmission agreements.

This suggests a situation where the station doesn't qualify for must carry status.

 

[jegrant]

Yeah, I agree - I just haven't found any particular reason why they wouldn't qualify for Must Carry. They should at least qualify to have the x.1 of each of their two separately licensed TV stations carried on DISH and DirecTV. For example, TPT in Minneapolis owns two TV stations and they are each carried on DISH - Channel 2 and Channel 17: http://www.tpt.org/channels/ . The subchannels are not carried, as is standard practice on satellite.

 

[harshness]

Yeah, I agree - I just haven't found any particular reason why they wouldn't qualify for Must Carry.

It has long been speculated that DIRECTV has an internal channel numbering limit -- in the form of a relatively small number of binary digits used to represent an assigned reference number -- that has been reached. I would hope that they would cast off OTA-only data before they would not carry a must-carry.