STELAR Replacement included in Spending Bill

[cpalmer2k]

Didn't see a thread on this forum for this yet, but the "compromise" version of the STELAR replacement bill has made it into the massive spending package that Congress is passing this week. There are catches though.

The part of the bill that would create permanent distant-signal licenses covers RVs, truckers, tailgaters and “short markets” that do not have a full complement of local ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox-affiliated TV stations. However, for satellite operators to qualify for the permanent license, the bill requires that they must deliver local TV signals when possible. Dish has already accomplished this, but DirecTV would have to meet the bill’s May 31, 2020 deadline for 12 “unserved” rural TV markets.

The markets involved are as follows:

• Alpena, Michigan
• Bowling Green, Kentucky
• Casper-Riverton, Wyoming
• Cheyenne, Wyoming/Scottsbluff, Nebraska
• Grand Junction, Colorado
• Helena, Montana
• North Platte, Nebraska
• Ottumwa, Iowa/Kirksville, Missouri
• Presque Isle, Maine
• San Angelo, Texas
• Victoria, Texas
• Glendive, Montana

I'm happy to see this will be the end of the "every five year" cycle for those of us with RV waivers. I just hope DirecTV doesn't say "screw everybody" and decide to not add the 12 markets.

 

[nelson61]

Multichannel did a good write up on it.

News - Multichannel News

All of the latest from Multichannel News

www.multichannel.com

 

[ejb1980]

Does this mean that I will lose my DNS NBC at the end of the month? I have a local NBC and another one OTA but I managed to get DNS, too, a while ago (just for NBC) and I don't want to lose it!

 

[slice1900]

From what I understand everyone who was "grandfathered" with DNS channels who now has locals available will lose the DNS channels that are the same network as the locals. Nothing you can do to stop it, or get them back. Complain to your congressman if you don't like it, Directv has no say in it.

If you are in a "short market" that has one or two network affiliates missing and have DNS channels to cover those you will keep those.

If you have DNS channels through a boat/RV/etc. type account that allows them since you move around a lot, you'll keep them.

The gotcha for Directv customers is that if Directv doesn't provide locals via satellite to the remaining 12 markets where they don't currently offer them they will lose their right to broadcast DNS channels for ALL customers. They never added the missing locals even in markets where D14 has a dedicated spot beam, so I assume the reason was cost - why add locals in tiny markets where they might only add a handful of new customers by offering locals?

Obviously now the math will change and hundreds of thousands of their customers would be affected if they lost the ability to deliver DNS channels, so I expect they will cover those remaining markets. If there are some where they don't have spot beams they can use, they can use a national transponder to deliver them, which they have done at times for Puerto Rico "locals".

 

[zippyfrog]

Is there a place where we can read the combined compromised bill?

Multichannel also talks about eliminating some equipment fees but the links are to the two separate bills.

 

[slice1900]

Its never easy getting the text of such bills because they are almost always introduced as amendments to previous bills - so they say "remove this paragraph", "change these words to that", "add these lines to the end of this paragraph" and so forth.

I'm SURE that's not deliberate to hide what they are doing from citizens who don't have the time to sit down with a copy of the old bill and piece together what is says (especially since the old bill will be the same thing so you'd have to go through a half dozen such iterations to get the actual text of this bill) If a non-profit for government accountability really want to do a public service, providing the actual text of bills that are voted on would be useful. Hell, maybe you could even have an automated system do that these days - though they'd probably start using language tricks to make it harder when they really had some dirty business to hide.

I think the "elimination of equipment fees" thing is not allowing them to charge for use of equipment you own. I think that was targeted at e.g. ISPs that make you pay for a cable modem even if you bring your own. It probably wouldn't affect Directv customers with "owned" receivers since they aren't charging you a rental fee for receivers, but a "per TV fee".

They also require better fee disclosure, so a cable/satellite company can't advertise $29.99 and then have an asterisk "not including required fees for equipment, local channels and regional sports networks".

 

[cpalmer2k]

The relevant section of the US Code of Laws is located here. Note it has NOT been updated yet to reflect the bill signed yesterday, but it should be in the next few days. The last update was 12/5, so it seems that they update it with some regularity.

 

[Jimbo]

I'm gonna GUESS, D* covers its bases and in the long run, we don't lose our Local channels ... but you never know.

 

[ejb1980]

From what I read on DBS, it looks like Directv has until the end of May to cover the 12 markets they do not currently have local channels for yet. At that point, they will have no reason for DNS, except for RV/airlines but it is very likely that all of us "regular" customers with DNS will lose it at the end of May. Directv will have locals for everyone at that point. It has no effect on any current LIL.

 

[slice1900]

I expect Directv will end up carrying those 12 markets by May 31st and preserve DNS for those who legitimately need it. People who are grandfathered on DNS are supposed to lose it after today under the new law.

 

[cpalmer2k]

People who are grandfathered on DNS are supposed to lose it after today under the new law.

That part is kind of open for debate. The way I read it is DirecTV can allow people who received those stations until May 31st, or until they begin offering locals in the 12 remaining markets, whichever happens to come first:

(1) IN GENERAL.—A subscriber of a satellite carrier who receives the secondary transmission of a network station under the statutory license in section 119 of title 17, United States Code, as in effect on the day before the date of the enactment of this Act, and to whom subsection (a)(2)(B) of such section, as amended by subsection (a), does not apply, shall continue to be eligible to receive that secondary transmission from such carrier under such license, and at the royalty rate established for such license by the Copyright Royalty Board or voluntary agreement, as applicable, until the date that is the earlier of—
(A) 180 days after the date of the enactment of this Act; or
(B) the date on which such carrier provides local-into-local service to all DMAs.

 

[Jimbo]

From what I read on DBS, it looks like Directv has until the end of May to cover the 12 markets they do not currently have local channels for yet. At that point, they will have no reason for DNS, except for RV/airlines but it is very likely that all of us "regular" customers with DNS will lose it at the end of May. Directv will have locals for everyone at that point. It has no effect on any current LIL.

Except RV's ...

 

[ejb1980]

Except RV's ...

Don't RVs get DNS not LIL? If they get LIL now, it won't change, but I think RVs get DNS. That part is not clear to me...

- Come June 1st, will ch 390-399 just go away? What about incomplete markets where a neighboring spotbeam for a SV LIL doesn't reach? They will need a national feed of the networks to plug in.
- What about RVs? Are you going to have to call/chat and tell them where you are every time you set up so you'll have networks? OTA only?
- What about the Directv on airplanes? That would be annoying to watch if you had to switch channels every time you flew over a DMA boundary!

 

[Jimbo]

Don't RVs get DNS not LIL? If they get LIL now, it won't change, but I think RVs get DNS. That part is not clear to me...

- Come June 1st, will ch 390-399 just go away? What about incomplete markets where a neighboring spotbeam for a SV LIL doesn't reach? They will need a national feed of the networks to plug in.
- What about RVs? Are you going to have to call/chat and tell them where you are every time you set up so you'll have networks? OTA only?
- What about the Directv on airplanes? That would be annoying to watch if you had to switch channels every time you flew over a DMA boundary!

As for RV's, I don't think they get DNS ... If I am travelling from say Ohio to Florida, why would I want NY Locals, theres nothing Local about that ... Most people travelling want the local where they are, news, weather ect.

I generally call them when I'm going to be somewhere for awhile, not when I'm there for a night.
The RV's generally have antennas on the rigs for the night time that your moving from city to city .... they don't always get locals that are great for where your at, but most times you can get Something.

As for Airplanes ....
I don't know that what your watching on those in the air TV's are actually Live, last time I remember using one, it was a database of shows and movies.

 

[NYDutch]

I know quite a few RV'ers that have DTV's east or west coast DNS feeds, with some getting both.

 

[cpalmer2k]

Based on my reading of the law there are more questions than answers at this point in time. The revised law (the full text of which still hasn't been updated in the Code of Laws, so you have to look at the old vs the new side by side and try to match it up) says that DirecTV and Dish Network can essentially qualify for a permanent license to offer DNS to RVers, tailgaters and commercial truck drivers as long as they offer local channels in all 212 markets by May 31, 2020. Dish already meets this qualification It is up to DirecTV to decide whether they want to offer the 12 additional markets or not. If they don't they can't offer DNS after May 31, 2020. The new law seems to phase out all previous "grandfathered" residential customers based on the reading of it. It says they can continue to offer those DNS feeds until May 31st, or until they offer locals in all 12 markets whichever comes first. The logic in this is that if they're offering locals in every market those subscribers don't have a reason to get DNS anymore (even though they might want them).

As for what RVers currently get, it depends on what year you filled out your RV waivers. Some grandfathered RV users get both east and west coast DNS stations in HD. At some point in one of the renewals of the law they added a provision that said you weren't allowed to receive HD programming from a time zone "earlier than your current one". For this reason DirecTV started limiting RVers to either East Coast DNS, or West Coast DNS based on the state your RV was registered in. (There is no legal reason that DirecTV can't allow those in the Central/East or Mountain time zones to receive West Coast DNS stations, but they choose not to. They just couldn't allow those in the Mountain/West time zones to receive the NY stations). Dish took a different approach- they give all RV users West Coast DNS only.

We did our RV waiver back in 2013. At that point we were given the option of choosing whatever programming package we wanted with, or without local channels. We chose to keep the regular package, so if we are within the confines of our local "spot beam" we get both our local channels and east coast DNS stations.

 

[Jimbo]

I know quite a few RV'ers that have DTV's east or west coast DNS feeds, with some getting both.

I suppose you could apply for it, but why would you want locals from some city potentially a 1000 miles away ?

 

[cpalmer2k]

I suppose you could apply for it, but why would you want locals from some city potentially a 1000 miles away ?

You're not signing up for it for the local news, you sign up for dependable network coverage anywhere you go. DirecTV doesn't do the "change zip codes everywhere you stop" thing very well like Dish. If you go outside your area and don't have DNS you mostly have to rely on antenna which you can still do to see local news/weather where you are. But if you have DNS you set your recordings once on the DNS stations and they record no matter where you are. You also don't have to worry about local channel disputes, etc. The DNS stations are always available. If one gets in a dispute (it happened earlier this year when CBS pulled their owned & operated stations) they simply replace the DNS channel with another one on the same 3xx channel number. Your recordings just continue without interruption. In that case we got WUSA out of Washington for a few days instead of WCBS NY.

 

[slice1900]

If you have an actual RV account you can get DNS. If you have a regular residential account and put one of the receivers in your RV it is locked to your DMA so when you leave your area you are SOL. Incentive for paying for a separate RV account, I guess.

 

[NYDutch]

I suppose you could apply for it, but why would you want locals from some city potentially a 1000 miles away ?

cpalmer covered why many DTV RV'ers choose DNS, but since I'm a Dish subscriber with the ease of changing locals that comes with it, I do prefer getting the local news/weather, etc. As for recordings, my Dish Hoppers support a "seek" feature that lets me designate a program to record, and the correct channel is found wherever I am.