Another Dispute for Dish Network
Looks like Dish Network is in another programming dispute, this time with the folks at Young Broadcasting. And as much as I pick on Dish over some of the silly programming disputes this time I am in Dish Networks corner and support them in their actions.
According to a number of Young Broadcasting station websites including the WLNS website they are upset that Dish Network will not agree to pay about a penny a subscriber per day to receive their signal.
According to the WLNS website “We know that it is important to keep you informed, and therefore, we want you to know the FACTS:
· DISH charges you a fee for WLNS TV6. We believe DISH should be willing to pay a small, but fair, portion of the fees you pay to DISH for the program content we provide to you.
· The fair compensation that we are asking for, as part of our contract with DISH, is about a penny per day, per subscriber. We believe that a penny per day per subscriber is a reasonable demand for our award winning news, sports and entertainment programming. It is considerably less than the amount paid by DISH to less popular satellite/cable networks.”
What the folks at WLNS and Young Broadcasting don’t seem to get is that they broadcast to their DMA for FREE anyone who lives in their area should be able to pick up their signal with an off air antenna for FREE. However many residents that are served by the Young Stations cannot get an acceptable signal via off air antenna. Therefore in order to watch channels such as WLNS they need to subscribe to cable or watch via satellite.
Why should Dish or DirecTV pay any money to help these stations get their signals to viewers in their area, if anything Dish Network and DirecTV are doing these stations a favor by bringing these stations additional viewers in their area which in turn means more people are watching their station which ultimately means more ad revenue for the station!
Broadcast stations should welcome satellite companies rebroadcasting them with open arms, and maybe they should be paying the satellite companies for helping them reach the folks in their community that their broadcast signals are supposed to reach.
I feel that companies like Dish Network and DirecTV are doing these stations and communities a public service by carrying these broadcast signals so that viewers in the area can watch their local news and see local ads. If these channels are dropped from Dish it’s a bunch more eyes not watching the ads on WLNS and the other Young Broadcasting channels.
A penny a day is a lot for a station which is broadcast for free, that’s 30 cents a month per subscriber. And while Dish Network does charge $4.99 a month for its customers to receive locals, however with that said I believe that Dish and DirecTV are not making money on offering locals, in fact I consider the locals packages to be loss leaders for the satellite companies. If you figure that they have to set up a point of presence to receive the broadcast networks channels, then they must take that signal and send it out over fiber lines (which is a big cost) from there the signal goes to the uplink center where the signal is processed and then its uplinked to the multi-million dollar satellites (using transponder space which could make a lot more money offering national programming) and then the signal is received by viewers in the DMA for each station.
With the upcoming digital switchover the cost for bringing customers their locals will increase as a bigger faster fiber line is needed to carry the digital signals to the uplink.
And speaking of the digital switchover, if Young Broadcasting pulls their signals from Dish Network it might be leaving a lot of its viewers in the dark when the digital switchover happen, as many folks will not switch providers for one local station.
Ultimately Young Broadcasting is no looking out for the public they are supposed to be serving, instead they are only motivated by corporate greed. They want satellite companies to pay for what they are giving away for free. And if satellite companies don’t want to pay their ransom then they don’t want you the customer to be able to see their programming.
Shame on Young Broadcasting.
It appears the deadline for talks has been extended until 4pm today.
Update on NASCAR HOTPASS on DirecTV
Yesterday I wrote how I was hearing strong rumors that the pay sports package NASCAR Hotpass was being discontinued by DirecTV. I was able to confirm these rumors with DirecTV and have been told by DirecTV that the NASCAR Hotpass package will evolve into an exciting new product and that details of this new product will be announced in a few weeks.
I was a NASCAR Hotpass subscriber this past season and was impressed with the offering, it was very well produced and looked great in HD. DirecTV went all out for the Hotpass product and it showed; however unfortunately it looks like not enough NASCAR fans took advantage of the package which had lead to the demise of the Hotpass package as we knew it.
I am looking forward to seeing what DirecTV has for NASCAR fans for the next season.
Corrections
First yesterday in a rush to add the news of Nascar Hotpass to The Satellite Dish I called it “NASCAR Speedpass.”
Secondly in Tuesday’s edition of “The Satellite Dish” I talked about how DirecTV was going to be the exclusive sponsor of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue, this was incorrect DirecTV was sponsoring the “Year in Pictures” edition of Sports Illustrated. With the cold weather we have been having lately, I guess you can tell where my mind was.
My apologies for these mistakes.
jerryez commented:
It should also be noted that the $4.99 charges is for four or sometime many more stations, so that is less than $1.00 per station and Young wants 30% of that $1 for doing nothing. Out of that $1, Dish has to pay all of their uplink costs. So, there profit, if any, is much less that the $.30 that Young is demanding.
californiaguy commented:
Remember that Young Broadcasting demanded an exorbitant amount of money to keep NBC on KRON... NBC bought their own station there and have suffered tremendously since.
PAID PROGRAMMING commented:
Kron 4 has gone downhill since they lost the rights to NBC programing. I don't see why Dish can't broadcast another MY TV Station .
z commented:
One more thing...
That letter I sent was responded to by "We can agree to disagree"
The only real way to get through to a company like this is to contact the sponsors. If you know of any companies you do business with that advertise through them, contact those business and let them know... Less viewers is bad for them.
This kind of stuff always gets me worked up. Why should we be paying to be advertised to?
Bobby commented:
Every penny the Greedy stations get should be required to be paid to the FCC for the FREE license they have that REQUIRES them to provide FREE television service to viewers in their DMA.
Fitz commented:
I agree with biased2. Many folks would not even consider a provider who doesn't carry their local stations. Providers like Dish should pay something to the local stations, not that I know what is actually reasonable.
biased2 commented:
Considering that many people didn't even want to go to satellite until they had their locals available, they have every reason to request part of that $4.95 per month.
biased commented:
There's a big difference between free on-air broadcasts and delivery via satellite or cable: The satellite or cable company makes money on the signal. Why should that company be able to make money on the signal without compensating the provider, just as it compensates Disney, Turner and other companies?