Satellite Supports TV Choice
If you’re a satellite customer you might know that getting your locals via satellite is not like getting your locals via cable television. For example, while you might live in Southern Arkansas the locals you get via satellite might be from Louisiana. Major portions of Wyoming can’t watch Wyoming television stations via satellite.
It’s not the satellite companies who have made these rules, it’s the government and both Dish Network and DirecTV are trying to get these rules fixed.
The Satellite Home Viewer Extension and Reauthorization Act (SHVERA) is up for renewal this year and could give the satellite companies a chance of correcting this outdated rules.
However it seems that those who do not want this change are the broadcasters themselves. They feel if the rules are changes that the loss in viewers to their stations will hurt their bottom lines.
Currently satellite viewers can only view the broadcast stations in their DMA as assigned by Nielson. For some these channels are honest to goodness in state channels, but for many others they are not. The customer has no choice here as the satellite companies can only give them the locals that they are told they can give them.
Is your local news really local when it comes from over 300 miles away? (And there are other stations closer in the viewers local areas?) Again this is why satellite companies will be working together to try changing the rules to bring real local television to their customers.
I fully support the satellite companies on this one and hope they work to expand things so that satellite companies can also offer channels from neighboring markets. For example where I live my cable system carries Hartford, CT locals and Springfield, Mass locals as well. But under the rules I am not allowed to get the Springfield locals via satellite. I feel satellite should be allowed to give customers exactly what cable customers in any given area can get.
I am sure this is going to be a long fight, but again its one I fully support. I am happy both satellite companies are coming together for TV choice for their customers.
Musical Satellites
It time for the engineers at Echostar to get ready to play musical satellites. The final payload was moved off of the Echostar 5 satellite onto the new CIEL 2 satellite which was launched back in December 10th.
For months most the payload was moved over to the CIEL 2 from Echostar 5 except for the signals that were housed on Transponder 5 of the new satellite. Rumors indicated that a software glitch was preventing the Echostar engineers from using transponder 5 on the new satellite. Whatever the software glitch was it is fixed now and all Dish Network programming coming from the 129 west orbital location is now all coming from the new CIEL 2 satellite.
With the satellite freed up it will soon be time for Echostar engineers to play musical chairs with their satellites. The plan is to move the Echostar 5 satellite for the 148 degree orbital location. Echostar 1 (which launched in 1995) is being moved to the 77 degree orbital location. A new satellite called “Quetzsat 1” will replace Eventualy Echostar 1 at 77 degrees. Quetzast will service North America, Central America and Mexico. Quetzsat 1 is scheduled for launch in 2011.
Let the game of musical satellites commence!
KyL416 commented:
Whoever created the video for that pitch on the site is completely misinformed. Unlike what they claim in the video, it is NOT currently technically possible to get ANY local station you want via satellite. They use spot beams for the locals so they can use the same transponder frequency for different parts of the country. Similar to how with antenna TV you only have 67 available channels (no channel 1 and TV cannot use UHF 37 in the USA), but the signal only goes at most 70 miles so stations in other markets can use the same number, so there are TONS more than just 67 licensed stations in the country. You can only recieve nearby markets with satellite. A transponder can carry around 12 stations, an average satellite band only has 32 transponders, so that's around 384 channels if every transponder had a national beam. In the USA there are 1100+ full powered stations, if you throw in the class A and other low powered stations that either have satellite carraige or are also seeking a change to the rules to make carraige of Class A stations mandatory, the number grows to 1600+. If they were to put every single local station in the country on a national beam, they would need like 5 new satellites (Or around 3 if they were to use MPEG4) devoted to strictly carrying locals to carry them all. Something that is likely financially impossible to coordinate. First they'd need to get new satellite slots, since their existing slots are already used for national programming, and the sky is pretty full right now when it comes to available slots so that will be a challenge in its own. They also will need to build new satellites since the spot beams on their existing satellites would be useless if they mandated that all locals need to be carried on national beams. Not to mention the cost of every single customer needing to replace their dishes and recievers since the existing dishes won't be able to recieve these slots, and unless you have the newest recievers capable of recieving a firmware upgrade to tune to these slots, you'll need a new reciever, which many customers who signed up prior to 2005 don't.
The point of the issue is people wanting to get neighboring markets due to either commuting to another market for work everyday, or the fact that the stations that claim you in their market (i.e. the NYC channels and Pike county Pennsylvania) don't even cover your county, while the neighboring market (Wilkes-Barre, PA) frequently sends reporters to the area. The spot beams are usually wide enough to go into neighboring markets. The majority of cable companies in border counties already do this (except for stubborn cable companies like Comcast who refuse to carry any local except the ones in your market), but due to some rediculous rule satellite can't.
meglaw commented:
If you're interested in seeing the outdated Satellite Home Viewer Extension and Reauthorization Act changed, I'd encourage you to visit mytvrights.com and sign the petition asking Congress to change this law.
dannsh commented:
I live Dolores, CO. We get the Albuquerque DMA. However we are on the West Slope of the Rockies and Grand Junction, CO would be a better fit for us.
n commented:
They can't arbitrarily create a new market. They need actual existing full powered stations that are affiliated with networks to make it up. Looking up the stations that are actually near the Modesto area, only 2 are full powered, the rest are mostly low powered translators of other stations and a few low powered class A stations. And because of interference concerns due to the close proximity of several neighboring markets, it will be hard to even grant a construction permit for a new full powered station in the area. The odds are a Modesto market would be just like one of those pointless 200+ markets that have one or two stations cherrypicking programming from all the networks when they could easily be part of a nearby decent sized market that has access to every network.
lost commented:
Where I live I am smack dab in the middle of Fresno and Sacramento. I think the Modesto, CA area should be its' own market.
kyl416 commented:
The broadcasters shouldn't be able to play favorites. If they let the local cable system for a county/community have stations from neighboring market(s) they should be forced to grant the satellite systems permission to carry the same channels too, and not just limit it to the ancient list of signifigantly viewed channels as many cable companies carry more than just the stations on that list.