OK...confused again and back to square 1. I forgot about the exclusivity thing and blackouts. Therein lies the rub. How can it be that a local station that only transmits to the Atlanta DMA has the exclusive right to carry Braves games in a territory that stretches from the Mississippi River to the Atlantic coast without the ability to negotiate to provide said signal outside of Atlanta? Hence D*'s, Comcast's, et.al.'s carriage of games in Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, parts of North Carolina, and other parts of Georgia? Why can't E*? AS said before, even if E* did cary MLD EI and I subscribed, the braves games would still be blocked out. Something's just not right about all of this.
Examiner,
The problem lies betwwen MLB and WPCH, and partially DirecTV (READ ON). MLB determines each Teams DMA.
The Braves Local DMA is larger than the coverage of WPCH. MLB determined the Braves local DMA. WPCH doesn't have enough transmitters nor FCC Terrestrial licenses to cover the entire Atlanta Braves DMA. MLB knows this, they really don't care.
MLB is more interested in protecting their Monopoly power, than if or how an "In Market" Braves Fan will be able to get access to games carried on a local Market station that is out of his/her reach.
The only hope for these dis-enfranchised Fans is a third party provider Satellite or Cable to carry WPCH and offer it to households outside WPCH's Grade A or Grade B signal contours.
The biggest issue with this is that much of the programing carried on WPCH other than Baseball games is Syndicated Exclusive content most of which is sold to many other local Stations in adjacent DMA's. This means all that content would have to be blacked out to avoid Legal challenges from those adjacent stations.
Dish has a secondary problem in that they can NO LONGER Legally provide ANY out of market content from any out of market station to any adjacent DMA's.
The reason for this was a legal challenge from the NAB and a number of Local Market Stations because Dish for some time knowingly allowed a number of subscribers to pay for imported Distant Network affiliated signals.
Dish crafted an agreement with the NAB and all of the Local Market stations that had objected,except for a couple of FOX Network Owned Affiliates. The FOX owned affiliates refused to sign the agreement, which destroyed the agreement. At the time Fox Networks had a controlling interest in DirecTV, Even though this was technically illegal.
FOX Networks promised the FCC and the Federal Government they would not use their ownership in their Networks to give DirecTV a competitive advantage. This clause was part of the agreement the government required to allow FOX networks get the controlling interest in DirecTV. After the collapse of the Dish/NAB agreement at the behest of FOX (DirecTV). DirecTV became the only national provider to be able to offer "Out of Market" stations and or carry "Significantly Viewed" Adjacent signals to subscribers outside their DMA, or deliver out of market signals to subscribers that had been granted Waivers from their Affiliated Networks to be able to import distant signals.
DirecTV forced Dish's hands using their own OWNED OTA Affiliated signals to Force Dish to remove all Out of Market stations from any and all subscribers even those that had legal rights to receive them. This gave DirecTV a competitive advantage. This legal challenge also means Dish will never be able to offer any Out of Market content from WPCH or any other affiliated signal from outside any subscribers DMA, be that be Braves Games or any other content to any Dish Subscribers outside of WPCH's DMA, which is greatly smaller than the Atlanta Braves DMA.
Thanks MLB and especially DirecTV, your the best.
This means if you want Braves Baseball and live outside of WPCH's DMA, but still within the Braves Local DMA, then you will have to get DirecTV or Cable (If your local Cable company carries WPCH).
John
