SHVERA Reforms Could Lead To Universal Local-Into-Local Next Year: Ergen
Dish Network Boss Set To Testify Before Congress About Satellite Changes
John Eggerton -- Multichannel News, 2/24/2009 10:57:36 AM
In prepared testimony for a House hearing on reauthorizing the Satellite Home Viewer Extension and Reauthorization Act, Dish Network chairman Charlie Ergen will emphasize how the landscape has evolved and changes he would like to see governing the delivery of signals.
"The digital age has arrived," Ergen said, "and the laws need to catch up."
That would include not making satellite operators pay to carry any TV stations or, absent that, Congress coming up with a single retransmission-consent rate that applies to all broadcasters and pay TV providers. It also means revamping the satellite carriage regime and what constitutes a local signal.
"Treat a monopoly like a monopoly," he said. "Satellite providers already pay a fixed, per-subscriber copyright royalty rate, and we see no reason why a similar concept can't work for retransmission consent."
In prepared testimony, Ergen listed four fixes he says should be made to SHVERA, which essentially provides the rules of the road for satellite delivery of local TV station signals.
Those fixes, according to Ergen, would address the following problems:
1) consumers being unable to get local news and sports from their home state because of the way markets are configured (almost half cross state lines, according to one satellite lobbyist);
2) rural communities not receiving signals from affiliates of the four major broadcast networks;
3) retransmission-consent fights that deprive local consumers of station signals; and
4) must-carry stations with little or no local content, but which satellite operators are required to carry.
Ergen argued that pay TV providers should be able to import neighboring broadcast stations, with consumers getting to make the call about what local means.
For example, in a market straddling two states, the ABC affiliate may carry local news, or the games of the college in one state, while viewers in that split market would prefer to watch the games of a nearby college located in an adjacent market.
Ergen noted that Dish provides local-into-local service in 178 of Nielsen's 210 markets, or about 97% of TV households. In most of the rest, there are three or fewer network affiliates, which makes it uneconomical to serve those DMAs because viewers won't want the service it is missing, say, the local NBC affiliate, and the providers is prevented from importing a nearby Peacock affiliate.
To help remedy that, Congress should step in and allow pay TV providers to import stations from adjacent markets. "If broadcasters won't invest in their local communities," he said, "pay-TV providers should be able to treat a nearby affiliate as the local affiliate."
At a press conference with reporters before his appearance before the House Communications, Tech & Internet Subcommittee, Ergen said that if Congress institutes his suggested broad reforms, that the marketplace would drive either his company, or competitor DirecTV to serve virtually all those 210 markets, and by as early as next year. "I would predict that, based on what we're proposing, it is highly likely that you would get all 210 DMA's with all the DBS players without it being mandated by Congress, and you would probably get it by 2010."
Ergen also argues that retransmission consent reform is needed because broadcasters have too much leverage when they can play a multiplying number of multichannel video providers off one another and that the FCC should set a 20-hours-per week minimum of local programming as a threshold for TV stations to get must-carry status, saying satellite operators are forced to carry "hundreds of stations today that have little or no local content."
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Ergen negates the fact he (Dish) intentionally blocks OTA PSIP (The Program and System Information Protocol (PSIP) is the protocol used in the ATSC digital television system for carrying metadata about each channel in the broadcast transport stream of a TV station and for publishing information about television programs so that viewers can select what to watch by title and description.); program guide / content data from OTA signals in order to force subs into submission to pay for program guide info. This in leu of SmatChip technology that is mandated by the FCC to protect children and families (PSIP contains rating data which is intentionally blocked). He's a self severing hypocrite.
Bradley Hallihan - 2/24/2009 2:54:37 PM EST -
They should revamp the rules to state that if the local cable system for a given county carries neighboring locals, the local stations cannot deny satellite providers permission to do the same. And not just limit it to the highly flawed "sigview" list, it should apply to ANY out of market local station that the local cable system carries. For example in my county WPIX, WFMZ, WLVT, WTXF and WWOR are not on the sigview list, yet the cable system carries them.
Kyle - 2/24/2009 1:19:50 PM EST
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