FYI:
Locast lights up Pittsburgh
https://www.fiercevideo.com/broadcasting/locast-lights-up-pittsburgh?mkt_tok=Mjk0LU1RRi0wNTYAAAF-c_lEdPq6tAcq8gtxHslGSkDX-F1GX2hhghywGYNkL1uD5LAucainlGpi7MqBlin9An0ddoMk86euXhcpbbmHw4H17jXR-ho93cqg_9LXogpJ3w-0pQ&mrkid=23833277
<https://www.fiercevideo.com/broadcasting/locast-lights-up-pittsburgh?mkt_tok=Mjk0LU1RRi0wNTYAAAF-c_lEdPq6tAcq8gtxHslGSkDX-F1GX2hhghywGYNkL1uD5LAucainlGpi7MqBlin9An0ddoMk86euXhcpbbmHw4H17jXR-ho93cqg_9LXogpJ3w-0pQ&mrkid=23833277>
The free broadcast television streaming service Locast has added a 35th market
and a new second-person plural pronoun, “yinz.”
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yinz>
The Washington-based non-profit announced Friday morning
<https://www.locast.org/news/press-releases/locast-brings-free-local-tv-streaming-service-to-pittsburgh/>
that it had expanded to the Pittsburgh market, home of one of America’s oldest
broadcast stations <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KDKA-TV>as well as that
regional shorthand for “you ones.”
The service’s press release says Locast’s service for area residents (the
Pittsburgh market covers Morgantown, W. Va.) delivers 40-plus stations,
including NBC affiliate WPXI, WTAE (ABC), KDKA (CBS, which went on the air in
1949), and WPGH (Fox), as well as PBS, CW and other local stations.
This expansion, following the additions of the Raleigh-Durham market
<https://www.fiercevideo.com/video/locast-adds-market-hits-2-7m-users-as-legal-challenge-looms>
and Columbus
<https://www.fiercevideo.com/video/locast-nears-3m-users-as-it-adds-another-market>
in June, brings Locast’s reach to 54% of the U.S. population. At the Columbus
launch, Locast said it had hit “more than 2.8 million registered users
nationwide.”
Locast does not pay retransmission fees to broadcasters, relying on a clause in
the Copyright Act of 1976 <https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html> that
exempts non-profits providing secondary transmissions “without any purpose of
direct or indirect commercial advantage, and without charge to the recipients
of the secondary transmission other than assessments necessary to defray the
actual and reasonable costs of maintaining and operating the secondary
transmission service.”
Locast is free to watch but requests a $5 monthly donation to cover those
costs. Viewers who don’t ante up get interrupted after 15 minutes of viewing
with an ad encouraging donations — “If you’re sick of being ripped off by
services that cost too much, please do your part to keep Locast alive” — that
then kicks them back to the program guide.
It also offers free service to up to 25,000 qualifying students, first
responders and low-income households nationwide through its Locast Cares
program.
“We haven’t disclosed the number of donors,” Locast spokesman Marc Lumpkin
wrote in an email Friday. “However, we have stated that the majority of our
users do not donate.”
He declined to offer an updated figure for total users, saying Locast stopped
releasing new numbers after the Columbus launch.
Other broadcasters dislike Locast
Broadcasters have been unamused by Locast since it launched in January 2018
<https://www.fiercevideo.com/regulatory/news-note-locast-org-sony-pictures-television-cw-and-snap-inc>
as a project of Sports Fans Coalition NY, a group founded to advocate for
local viewers <https://www.sportsfans.org/about> who find themselves cut off
from local teams’ games by retransmission fights
<https://www.fiercevideo.com/video/at-t-tegna-settle-differences-as-dish-nexstar-fight-goes>
and other local blackouts.
In 2019, ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC sued Locast in United States District Court for
the Southern District of New York for copyright infringement. Their complaint
<https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.520217/gov.uscourts.nysd.520217.1.0_1.pdf>
says “Locast is nothing like the local booster services contemplated by
Congress in creating this narrow exemption” and alleges that “Locast’s
founding, funding, and operations reveal its decidedly commercial purposes.”
AT&T kicked in a $500,000 donation to Sports Fans Coalition NY in June of 2019
<https://www.fiercevideo.com/video/at-t-backs-free-broadcast-tv-service-locast-500k-donation>,
which the Dallas firm said
<https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/att-to-donate-500-000-to-locast-operator-sports-fans-coalition-ny-300876150.html>
was meant to support the group’s work to “make free broadcast content
available to consumers and offer them more choice.”
The broadcasters’ lawsuit remains in progress
<https://www.fiercevideo.com/regulatory/abc-cbs-fox-and-nbc-outline-case-against-locast>.
Zamir Ahmed, communications vice president at the National Association of
Broadcasters, did not expand on the group’s initial endorsement of that lawsuit
<https://www.nab.org/documents/newsroom/pressRelease.asp?id=5088> in which NAB
said it “wholeheartedly backs” the challenge against Locast, which it described
as a firm “thinly disguised as a not-for-profit entity that mirrors failed
predecessors Aereo and FilmOn in its bid to legitimize the theft of local TV
broadcast signals.”
Locast, meanwhile, recently added support for viewer profiles and favorite
channels. It offers service
<https://helpcenter.locast.org/portal/en/kb/articles/supported-devices> via web
browsers, iOS, Android, Roku, Fire TV, TiVo, Apple TV, among other platforms,
all of which check a viewer’s location via various methods
<https://helpcenter.locast.org/portal/en/kb/articles/geolocation-errors-on-tv-streaming-devices>
to limit viewership to local users.
---------------------------------------
Jon C. Moon
Ridgeline TV Channel 99
706-897-0872
www.ridgelinetv.net <http://www.ridgelinetv.net/>
