Craig Birkmaier wrote: > Why is it that Sinclair affiliates virtually ALL of > its stations with a major broadcast network? And why > is it that those networks are the ones who would like > to buy Sinclair and the rest of their affiliates? I guess what you're suggesting is that the national cap ends up helping large station groups, because the major networks need them in order to cover the land mass of the US, what with the national cap set to 39 percent. That's one way to look at it. The other possibility, though, is that a large and well designed OTA infrastructures owned by third parties could be just as addictive to the major networks as cable and DBS are. You seem to go on at length about how the major networks depend almost entirely on multichannel service providers to access the viewership, and that they *couldn't care less* about their OTA plant except as it gives them access to cable and DBS. So be consistent. If the major networks couldn't care less about their OTA plant, they should welcome having other organizations run that aspect of the operation. And with economies of scale, it can only help if these other organizations can access *all* markets, as big cable and all DBS companies do. > The point of posting this story was to raise the > question of what's going to happen next? And that's what I already covered. No big changes that impact anything. Even if the Democrats had won. Even if the telecom act of 1996 gets rewritten, because the parts that would be rewritten had not been effective anyway. E.g., unbundling of the local loop did not succeed at doing what was intended, for reasons that should have been obvious even in 1996. So a rewrite won't reduce the availability of broadband access to the consumer, and might instead be beneficial. Even ther Democrats have figured that out. 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.