Shennanigans. We are talking about some pimply faced kid buying a $12 ticket to see a PG-13 movie in theater 3 and instead sneaking into theater 5 of the same facility to see a different $12 movie. The theater got the $12, no matter what movie he saw.
With "moving", DISH gets the same $6/month no matter which locals are chosen (same as the theater owner). The broadcasters in the "moved to" market do potentially gain ad revenue, but at the expense of the "moved from" market. So it could be argued that the "mover" is stealing from the stations in the old market. Identically the same thing. The kid paid money and got to see the movie he chose. The "mover" paid money and got to see the stations he chose. In both cases, somebody got cheated out of revenue.
Face it, man is a rationalizing animal and will try to justify what he wants to do, or as the old Russian proveb says: "The church is near, but the roads are slippery. The tavern is far, but I will walk carefully."
The theater doesn't get to keep the whole $12 from the movie. There is a portion that is appropriated to the film's makers. That is where the cheating occurs. Here's an example
500 kids buy $12 tickets to "MOVIE PG". If the theatre pays 50% to the film maker, that is $3,000 to a film maker that shouldn't have received the money. However, by those kids jumping over to watch "MOVIE R" instead, the film maker of "MOVIE R" is cheated out of $3,000 that they should be entitled to receive for their work. The theatre would have the same bottom line either way, but the maker of the "MOVIE R" would be cheated.
As far as locals go, no one is forced to watch them. A viewer can simply opt out by not watching. "Moving" does the same thing in that a viewer opts out by not watching his city's locals. A local station has no right to force you to view their channel. However, they have pushed the government to make it so. I should be able to get my ABC from wherever in the country I feel like. If enough people did that with crappy stations and went to someone else's "store" instead, then the crappy station would either go out of business for having an inferior product or they would have to improve their product to attract viewers.
The moved from market is not cheated by the viewer since he owes them nothing for the privilege of watching that channel. They are free terrestrial channels, you only pay DISH for delivery of those channels. The only reason DISH would have to pay a local station is because that station is leaving open commercial air time for DISH-generated ads. If you put 3 TVs with the same local channel via air, cable, and DISH, you would see that at times, the commercials are different. That is what DISH pays the station for, the right to insert their own ad spots. The ad spots are paid for by the advertisers, not the viewers. If the advertisers' campaigns aren't successful, its because the medium wasn't effective. That's usually because the program sucked. That is why some shows have higher ad rates for commercials aired during those shows. I've seen network affiliates running church programming during the day when some other city's same network affiliate is running Family Guy (a show I like). I should have the right to choose which station I want to watch. If the local station lost too many people because of a church program, that is the result of their decision to air undesired programming. The loss of ad revenue would be their fault. That's why shows get canceled.
The only reason I can't choose where I get my ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC from is because the government says so. It's because the National Association of Broadcasters lobbied the government so we are forced to shop at only one store for the shows we want to watch instead of a free market. It doesn't benefit the consumer to be forced to choose one affiliate over another. It's a ban on free choice.
