Oh What To Do

ageism

SatelliteGuys Family
Original poster
Dec 2, 2006
95
0
Fight Back

Maybe I am old fashion or a nut but I believe in freedom of choice. I object very much to lawmakers telling me it is ok for me to buy porno, (not that I want to) anywhere in the country from a satellite. However, I have to live under a strict guidelines to buy the networks. If I don’t meet these guidelines I am SOL no matter if I have any means to get them or not. Who cares the network affiliate can still use my name and address to sell advertisement to the local market. Everyone is going after dish. They are not the problem. It is the law that is. No I am not a dish lover I really hate them. As far as I am concern Charlie can take his lies and money grubbing someplace where it is very hot and never snows. The real problem is the law. We need two go to war to get rid of the law and restore the right of choice. We can’t fight the networks they are way to big. The best way to attack the networks is through their affiliates. Think about it. One reason this law has so much teeth who, just who knows about it except the people who want or need the satellites to receive the networks. Think back to the c band days and primetime 24. Who but us knew about it. That is how they got away with this. The networks are not going to cover the story of Dish and the courts. They do not want this to see the light of day. They don’t want the country to know how they bought off congress to control our viewing and pad the pockets of their affiliates. Now the war. My one and only affiliate is NBC. The GM would not give me a wavier ,he wanted his control and he did not care that my picture was more snow than anything else. He just wanted my name to sell. That my friend is how we fight them. We go after the affiliate’s advertisers. No not the big ones like Honda, Proctor and Gamble, ect. We go after the local people who advertise with the affiliate. Especially the business who advertise during the news which is the big money. An NOT with guns of course. We boycott them . We picket them. We let them know we are going to bother them until they stop advertising with the affiliate. My affiliate is in a small town and I am reasonably sure this tactic will work. The reason they are advertising is they want more business not less. I don’t know about the bigger markets. That may be the way to go is attack the affiliates that are in small towns. Who knows if we can get lucky maybe the newspapers will start to pick up the story. We can educate the country of how our right of choice is taken off of us by the networks. With the political climate the way it is now, maybe congress will see the error of their ways and give us our right of choice back. Or of course we can sit back a cry and whine and take what ever scraps the networks will give us, and complain it is everyone’s fault but ours’.
 
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It is becoming increasingly obvious that many people complaining about loss of distants here whether they were legally getting them or not, have no inkling of an idea how the TV/Radio business works.

IT IS NOT ABOUT YOUR - SO CALLED - FREEDOM OF CHOICE!!

You do not have freedom of choice in TV viewing, you have never had freedom of choice in your TV viewing - so get over it.

The public airwaves were crafted so to allow local stations monopolistic territories because the public airwaves are not private property, they are public property. In order for a station to be viable, they must be guaranteed a viewer base that cannot be usurped by richer, more powerful entities.

You are not guaranteed a good local station, you are not guaranteed any local stations at all, and that is what most of us will have (NOTHING) if your selfish plans for seeing whichever TV station from anywhere are allowed to stand.

Local stations will die because their viewership is gone to outside sources. Your $0.20 per month is a pittance compared to advertising revenues which will be lost because you are watching a station from NYC, whose revenues will rise. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer, then disappear. All you will have left is PBS.

Yes, the NAB is being overzealous in its pursuit of this matter, but then probably 600,000 if Dishes distant subscribers were shady in their legal access to those stations.

Yes, congress should rewrite the law so you can receive SV channels just like cable, and if you are missing 1 or more networks in your DMA, you should get an adjoining DMA's station(s), not an O&O out of NY or LA. And perhaps subscribers who lie about their location should be banned from satellite use for 6 months, too.
 
like me, keep on believing in the freedom of choice, because it is slowly
being taken away from all of us.
 
In all reallity, its never been about the consumer (well it kinda is) but not how you think, they (the networks) dont care what the consumer and there rights (you have none on this front) but what you need to do is get to the advertisers, if you really want things to change, THAT is where to do it, until then, well you already see the end results.
 
I'll make this simple. Go ask Dish Network to sign a contract with KCBS to deliever nationally. The only contract Dish Network has is to deliver KCBS locally.

Freedom of choice. It also belongs to the TV stations.
 
IF FCC would require all stations in a DMA to supply a class A signal to 100% of the DMA. This would solve the problem instead of low powered stations that can't get a class A signal 20 miles in a DMA that is 400 x 200 sq. miles.
 
IF FCC would require all stations in a DMA to supply a class A signal to 100% of the DMA. This would solve the problem instead of low powered stations that can't get a class A signal 20 miles in a DMA that is 400 x 200 sq. miles.

One quarter of our town is in a canyon, about 100 homes. We are only 13 miles from the transmission towers. The town has offered all local networks the use of its water tower to put equipment so that the people in the canyon can have OTA local TV. No network has ever taken the offer. There is no cable here either. The cable companies said "too costly to run wires". So we have Satellite tv. The Government that did not require the local stations to deliver their signal to everyone in their broadcast area are now requiring E* to spend money to buy equipment to deliver these same stations. Seems like that Government has lost its way and should solve the original problem. Require the locals to serve all its area or lose its right to a monopoly in the area.
 
One quarter of our town is in a canyon, about 100 homes. We are only 13 miles from the transmission towers. The town has offered all local networks the use of its water tower to put equipment so that the people in the canyon can have OTA local TV. No network has ever taken the offer. There is no cable here either. The cable companies said "too costly to run wires". So we have Satellite tv. The Government that did not require the local stations to deliver their signal to everyone in their broadcast area are now requiring E* to spend money to buy equipment to deliver these same stations. Seems like that Government has lost its way and should solve the original problem. Require the locals to serve all its area or lose its right to a monopoly in the area.

Great Post! I agree 100%:up
 
The core problem is that the ideas behind the current "rules" are completely out of date.

The best solution would be to recognize that a monopoly is in no-one's best interest, and that the radio spectrum is a public resource managed by the government.

Being a public resource, once a signal is launched into the ether (broadcast) it is free of any restrictions, and may be received anywhere.

Furthermore, since the radio spectrum is limited, it should also be recognized that as a limited public resource, it is not in the public interest to have areas of the spectrum dedicated to closed groups -- licences for spectrum to carry encrypted traffic should be significantly (100x ?) more expensive than non encrypted traffic.

Let free market forces determine the success or failure of "local" TV. If there is enough local interest, it will flourish. If it delivers garbage (as most do) it will quickly die and free up that valuable radio spectrum for someone more enterprising to have a go.
 
It is becoming increasingly obvious that many people complaining about loss of distants here whether they were legally getting them or not, have no inkling of an idea how the TV/Radio business works.

IT IS NOT ABOUT YOUR - SO CALLED - FREEDOM OF CHOICE!!

You do not have freedom of choice in TV viewing, you have never had freedom of choice in your TV viewing - so get over it.

The public airwaves were crafted so to allow local stations monopolistic territories because the public airwaves are not private property, they are public property. In order for a station to be viable, they must be guaranteed a viewer base that cannot be usurped by richer, more powerful entities.

You are not guaranteed a good local station, you are not guaranteed any local stations at all, and that is what most of us will have (NOTHING) if your selfish plans for seeing whichever TV station from anywhere are allowed to stand.

Local stations will die because their viewership is gone to outside sources. Your $0.20 per month is a pittance compared to advertising revenues which will be lost because you are watching a station from NYC, whose revenues will rise. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer, then disappear. All you will have left is PBS.

Yes, the NAB is being overzealous in its pursuit of this matter, but then probably 600,000 if Dishes distant subscribers were shady in their legal access to those stations.

Yes, congress should rewrite the law so you can receive SV channels just like cable, and if you are missing 1 or more networks in your DMA, you should get an adjoining DMA's station(s), not an O&O out of NY or LA. And perhaps subscribers who lie about their location should be banned from satellite use for 6 months, too.

I beg to differ..The current system is nothing but a welfare system for small broadcasters who cannot compete in the marketplace..These rules are based on 1950's technology..The rules are in place to protect what should not be protected.
Now, the premise on which the DMA monopolies are based is on adversting dollars..
The NAB ignores the technonolgy available and would rather we not be able to watch what the NAB doesn't want us to watch.
I see no reason why satellite viewers cannot be under the same ruules as cable viewers....In many areas, cable viewers receive locals from more than one market .This is due to must carry....
I don't not thin k that tv viewers should be held hostage by an antiquated system..
 
I agree that we should not be held hostage by an antiquated system of monopoly protection, but recognize that the NAB and telecommunications industry spends hundreds of millions of dollars, over time, to protect their so-called interests in Congress. Witness the Telecommunications Reform Act of 1996.

I can dream of the day when I can pick WHAT network affiliate I watch, but it is about as likely as being able to freely and legally download music from the internet. The NAb and the RIAA have a lot in common. Spend millions protecting their interests; the consumer be damned.
 
PhilipPeake said:
Being a public resource, once a signal is launched into the ether (broadcast) it is free of any restrictions, and may be received anywhere.
The signal is able to be received anywhere. The issue is that should another company then be allowed to make a copy in order to sell to anyone and everyone?

No.
 
One quarter of our town is in a canyon, about 100 homes. We are only 13 miles from the transmission towers. The town has offered all local networks the use of its water tower to put equipment so that the people in the canyon can have OTA local TV. No network has ever taken the offer. There is no cable here either. The cable companies said "too costly to run wires". So we have Satellite tv. The Government that did not require the local stations to deliver their signal to everyone in their broadcast area are now requiring E* to spend money to buy equipment to deliver these same stations. Seems like that Government has lost its way and should solve the original problem. Require the locals to serve all its area or lose its right to a monopoly in the area.


Uh, you know the city could purchase repeaters that are not that costly in the grand scheme and install them themselves if it was that big of a deal.

You seem to forget that the FAA for example and the tree huggers dictate where Towers can be built and how tall they can be. They are not usually in the best Geographical location.
 
I'll make this simple. Go ask Dish Network to sign a contract with KCBS to deliever nationally. The only contract Dish Network has is to deliver KCBS locally.

Freedom of choice. It also belongs to the TV stations.

You know as well as anyone else that KCBS cannot sign a deal to distribute CBS Programming Nationwide as they are granted the rights to copyrighted material in a certain geographical location only - not nationwide.

This is true of not only their Network Programming from CBS, but syndicated programming as well.

The only thing they have the right to sale nationally is their News and Local programming.
 
You know as well as anyone else that KCBS cannot sign a deal to distribute CBS Programming Nationwide as they are granted the rights to copyrighted material in a certain geographical location only - not nationwide.

This is true of not only their Network Programming from CBS, but syndicated programming as well.

The only thing they have the right to sale nationally is their News and Local programming.

Now think carefully about what you said and extrapolate to the DNS issue at large.
 
As I have said multiple times, KCBS can sell local programming to the satellite companies today. That is outside of the realm of DNS. They just have to be blacked out when the copyrighted material comes on - no different than watching ESPN for certain sporting events.

This can be seen in Palm Springs for example, where they have the local Palm Springs and some L.A. locals - but it goes to infomericals when the Network Programming is on - and only available on the local Palm Springs Station.

Even in Salina Kansas, they have the stations from Wichita and Topeka (each about 100 miles away) on cable - but once the copyrighted material comes on, I believe it's Topeka gets cut off.

If all you want is the local news and programming - thats doable - though the systems are not in place via satellite for the most part to get it done.

It's exactly what Significantly viewed stations are all about.
 
Maybe its time to start thinking about just boycotting local networks and ABC, NBC, CBS and FOX completely. I did for 30 years at my present location. Then Dish allowed me the local distants in SF since 1999. For the first time I had locals.

I finally got all four channels in HD from SF and for the first time I felt good about watching local tv. Now they are all gone and in their place I have the NPS programming that is very hard to see on my tv. The SF stations look like they are taking them from ota receivers using rabbit ears looking like they are getting them from the tv tower in SF complete with the local ghosting. The picture is blurry and almost unwatchable on my favorite channels.

Hopefully they will get those uplinks in SF fixed so they are watchable, but I'm not holding my breath.

Maybe its time to just pull the plug and quit watching locals at all.
 
Uh, you know the city could purchase repeaters that are not that costly in the grand scheme and install them themselves if it was that big of a deal.

Huh? That makes no sense. You're advocating the government REBROADCAST (at no charge except for the tax dollars used to buy and maintain repeaters) but somehow DISH can't rebroadcast (with a fee collected and paid to the stations) because of government regulations/interference?
 
Huh? That makes no sense. You're advocating the government REBROADCAST (at no charge except for the tax dollars used to buy and maintain repeaters) but somehow DISH can't rebroadcast (with a fee collected and paid to the stations) because of government regulations/interference?

Dish broke the law.

That's life.

Why do you think some cities have their own CATV system and WiFi networks.

If your Canyon of 100 people had 1 doctor who broke the law and lost his license - and could not practice medicine any longer - is it your contention that he should be allowed to continue practicing medicine because he was the only one?

Again, that's life.

If its important to the 100 people, then make your voice heard where it can be fixed at your local government and have them install you repeaters.

A repeater for 100 people isnt worth it for any private venture.
 

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