Jon,
Does Locast carry local LPTV and Class A stations?
Our business manager's husband who grew up in central PA says "The two of yinz."
Craig FoxWTVU/WMJQSyracuse, NY
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-----Original Message-----
From: Jon C. Moon <jonmoon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: lptv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Sat, Jul 24, 2021 5:05 pm
Subject: [lptv] FYI: Locast now in Pittsburgh
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
The free broadcast television streaming service Locast has added a 35th market
and a new second-person plural pronoun, “yinz.”The Washington-based non-profit
announced Friday morning that it had expanded to the Pittsburgh market, home of
one of America’s oldest broadcast stations 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
and Columbus 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 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 LocastBroadcasters have
been unamused by Locast since it launched in January 2018 as a project of
Sports Fans Coalition NY, a group founded to advocate for local viewers who
find themselves cut off from local teams’ games by retransmission fights 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 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, which the Dallas firm said 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. Zamir
Ahmed, communications vice president at the National Association of
Broadcasters, did not expand on the group’s initial endorsement of that lawsuit
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 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 to limit viewership to local
users.---------------------------------------
Jon C. MoonRidgeline TV Channel 99706-897-0872www.ridgelinetv.net
