Locals and Nationals

[texasbrit]

This subject has been beaten to death for many years. The fact is , your local station is a business that has signed a contract with another business ( the network provider) giving them the exclusive right to distribute the product (prime time programming) in their local area (the DMA). It is the station's right to expect the terms of the contract to be honored. The station does not really care whether the programming is delivered by cable, satellite or OTA. As was posted, the FCC has stepped in and allowed DirecTV customers who can't get digital (HD) locals at all (from DirecTV or OTA) to receive east/west coast programming. But to go any further than that would start to upset the economics of local broadcasting. From the station's perspective, there might be all sorts of consequences. Nielsen would start to measure the number of satellite customers in a DMA that were taking their network programming from a remote station, and the advertising rates the station would get for ads in prime time would fall. As more people potentially decided they would rather watch progranmming from New York or LA, the presence of the local station in the community would start to fall.The station would probably start to cut back on local news and weather.

It may be true that the number of people taking advantage of "remote locals" might be small. But for your local network affiliate, it is the thin end of a very large wedge.

I am not really defending local affiliates, because a lot of them are not very good at being local providers. There are many people (including me) that think there should be more competition in local TV. But the fact remains, this is a business. Suppose you signed a franchise agreement with a fast food chain, that specifically said there would be no other sellers of that fast food within 50 miles. And then you discovered someone was selling the same fast food out of your local convenience store, with the approval of the franchisor. Would you not be upset? Would you not take legal action? Of course you would.

 

[Derwin0]

SYou are making the same argument that terrestrial radio made to fight satellite radio. What has happened? Some terrestrial radio stations are not on XM like WLW out of Cincy. Has it hurt anything? No, but it has helped them gain listenership.

Not really.
Typically Radio stations do not have exclusive contracts with the content supplier like television does. Copyrights for music and video are different, with music the songwriter owns the copyright, with video it's own by the production company.

The songwriters want the song heard as much as possible, as that increases his income, the television producers on the other hand make more money by controlling the distribution. To do what you want would take rights away from the copyright holder. The distants were setup as a narrow exemption in copyright law in order to service only those who could not see the programming.

As for the stations themselves, the money made from distant network fees, is nothing compared to the ad revenue based on viewership.

 

[mlb]

You are making the same argument that terrestrial radio made to fight satellite radio. What has happened? Some terrestrial radio stations are not on XM like WLW out of Cincy. Has it hurt anything? No, but it has helped them gain listenership.

Apples vs Oranges.

WLW produces every bit of their content, none of it is produced by anybody else.

If WLW just played ESPN radio all day long there would be an issue similar to this debate, but because they don't your argument is totally off base.