Bert, you are correct, 10 big sticks are NOT enough to cover 39 percent of US households.
http://www.tvb.org/rcentral/markettrack/us_hh_by_dma.asp On 7/22/2010 3:49 PM, Manfredi, Albert E wrote:
Craig Birkmaier wrote:The FCC may have "no authority" to regulate MVPDs (I think you're wrong on this), but they certainly do have the authority to change the rules for broadcasters in a way that makes sense today.If you say so. So they can mandaate that broadcasters buy expensive content and lose money broadcasting it?They allow broadcasters to deploy nationwide networks, filled with the same content of their choosing nationwide, just as they allow the MVPDs to do. What's ambiguous about this? Station groups should be given the same privilege. As to "expensive content," broadcasters ALREADY transmit the most expensive content there is, FOTA, and MVPDs transmit some of the cheapest content there is. Level the playing field, and then let the broadcasters sink or swim. Don't put burdens on them that MVPDs don't have, and then cheer when they go out of business.Did you read the article? Doesn't give percentages, but it looks like NBC and ABC only own 10 stations each. CBS owns 16, but two were for sale in 2007. Fox had the most, 25, but 8 were for sale. And this wikipedia article applied to 2007, so more may well have been sold by now.Nope. The number of stations is irrelevant. It is the number of homes that these stations reach that establishes the national cap.Sorry, but that is absurd on the face of it. All of these stations generally the same type of big stick, Craig. I can't begin to believe that 10 big sticks are enough to cover 39 percent of US hoseholds. From another thread,The only way to keep broadcasting viable will be to allow a national oligopoly, run by the five conglomerates...Fair enough, although I stopped thinking that would work when the congloms started selling off their O&Os. Why is it fair enough? Because that is roughly the same number as the major MVPDs (DirecTV, Dish, Comcast, Cox, TWC), that reach 85 to 90 percent of households. Fair is fair. If you're comfortable with 5 MVPDs being enough to not bias news and entertainment, 5 conglom-owned station groups should be even MORE adequate, given that *each* OTA home would have access to all five. Bert ---------------------------------------------------------------------- You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways: - Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at FreeLists.org - By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject line.
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