In my continued e-mail conversation with the lawyer from Tribune, he noted two things that I thought I'd pass along. As I mentioned earlier, the new channel KMYQ is *not* the CW but rather part of
www.mynetworktv.com. Something about "telenovelas" - looks like soap operas and reality shows to me. The only somewhat interesting part is that, according to him:
MyNetworkTV brands itself as America's first all-HDTV network. 100% of their
programming is expected to be broadcast in high definition.
And when I commented that Dish got KING-HD but wasn't forced to take KONG-HD (which is on Comcast), he said:
EchoStar already carries KMYQ's SD signal. We're negotiating in good faith
with EchoStar. We hope to resolve this soon, but it takes two sides to make
a deal.
So my $0.02 on this right now is that absoutely nothing will happen until 9/5/06 (when MyNetworkTV comes online) and even then, it'll be dicey. I think that Tribune holds the cards in this negotiation b/c people like us want KCPQ-HD but aren't willing to drop Dish. When I mentioned that to make us switch carriers is unfair, his response was this:
I disagree that it's unreasonable to suggest that someone change suppliers
if another supplier provides what the customer wants and the other doesn't.
That's competition, and there's no better way for you and others to send a
message to EchoStar (and DirecTV) than to take your business elsewhere if
they don't meet your needs. Otherwise, they win and you're stuck. And so are
we.
Yeah, right, like I'm going to drop Dish b/c of this... It's unbelievable that I would be forced to switch carriers just to get a LOCAL station! I can see the argument, say, if I wanted NFL Sunday Ticket or INHD, but this is OTA and KCPQ-HD (World Series, football!) is being held hostage by Tribune when Dish probably has techincal reasons (bandwidth) that they can't/won't carry KMYQ. Blah!