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 neofateCaveat DepascorPremium
join:2003-11-11
Birmingham, AL
 ·Charter
| reply to clickie
Re: seems october charters tacking on new line item said by clickie:It's utterly ridiculous that local broadcast stations are getting money when they give the thing away over the air. More and more OTA broadcasters are opting for retransmission agreements over Must Carry, and we all get to pay the price. I disagree. I think it is long overdue that these OTA stations receive some compensation.
Do they need it? No not really, advertisement dollars cover it.. but so does ad revenue for any other station. Which is a big reason I can make an argument for lower prices from MSO's.. but it is the way it is.
That the OTA stations are coming in and asking for this rate this late in the game is silly, I agree. If they expect to get along without raising any eyebrows is very narrow minded, short sighted.
It would be easy enough to change the tuning capability of your new televisions to alternate between OTA and QAM, etc tuning if this is the case to prevent 're-trans'. When turning to a known OTA, it shifts to appropriate input, and vice versa. Totally unnecessary, but would be an easy way to eliminate re-trans.
Bottom line they are getting a nominal fee because they can.. we get to pay for it. They can and will nickle and dime people to death.. it is the way of business. I think the MSO should eat this particular charge though.
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Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced. | |
| I disagree that they deserve any compensation. For starters, these people are given a slice of spectrum and a license, that for years they used as nothing more than a printing press for money. They've enjoyed profit margins greater than 50% while really providing no service to the public other than spewing their self-serving tripe.
Now that there is real competition for both viewers and some serious competition for advertising dollars, they don't get to enjoy the obscene margins. Tough. Welcome to the real world.
The local broadcasters continue to have an exclusive franchise granted by the government. It's not my fault it's not as valuable as it once was, and charging me for more content that I'll never watch irks the hell out of me. Especially when the people with their hand out throw it into the wind on a daily basis and pay a boatload of money in capital and operating expenses to do so.
If they want to be paid as a cable channel, they should turn in their license, turn off the transmitter and give their highly valuable spectrum over for other users. They can't have it both ways. | | |
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