[opendtv] Re: News: Northwest Station Pulls Signal In Retransmission Battle
- From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 5 Jan 2007 10:28:36 -0500
WESH is in Daytona Beach, 79.2 miles distant according to Antennaweb
(from U of F). It seems highly unlikely to me that any legal ruling
would declare WESH to be the legitimate NBC affiliate to serve the
Gainesville market.
True.
By market definition Ocala is included in the Orlando/Daytona
Beach/Melbourne market. Gainesville is a separate market. The WESH
transmitter is about midway between Orlando and Daytona Beach; 79.2
miles from Gainesville sounds about right.
What I can't figure out is who is preventing some enterprising
businessman from setting up an NBC affiliate in Gainesville. Especially
when you take must-carry and retransmission consent into account, i.e.
that the new affiliate would have access to this 93 percent usage Cox
system, this Gainesville status quo just does not make sense to me.
The Gainesville market is somewhat unique. Channel 5 (PBS) is run by
the University and has been around forever. Channel 20, WCJB (ABC)
was the first commercial net to come to town. I don't know the exact
year, but they were still struggling to make a profit when I worked
for them in the late '70s. By the mid '80s they started making
significant profits, having the only local news in the market. WOGX
came into the market as an independent then became a Fox affiliate.
They tried to compete in local news and gave up. They were purchased
by meredith Broadcasting a few years ago and are now run out of
Orlando as part of a triopoly. WGFL came next as an independent and
struggled to survive, even after they started to carry UPN and WB
shows. They have never offered local news, although, after gaining
the CBS affiliation a few years ago, they started to carry the
newscasts from the new Jacksonville CBS affiliate.
Bottom line, there not much money in the proposition to operate an
NBC affiliate in this market.
And, if not a new affiliate, there are already several translators in
Gainesville. Who is paying WESH, for example, not to use one of these
translators for NBC and other content? Seems like illegal things going
on.
There are frequencies available to add another station in
Gainesville. But the economics just don't add up.
Gainesville is primarily a college town, yes? Should be plenty of demand
for FOTA TV in a college town, if it were available. Not every college
student is a spoiled brat, I don't think.
Not really. The University has its own cable system for the dorms ( i
think they have some kind of relationship with Cox to get access to
many of the channels. And many of the off-campus apartments now
include cable and cable modems in the price of the apartment. This is
not a "poor" college town. Lot's of daddy's money around here. We
have the highest property taxes in the state; the highest gas prices
in the state; and intense competition with the students with daddy's
credit cards to get a seat in a decent restaurant.
The only thing that these kids whimp out on is beer - Budwiser has
65% market share.
Regards
Craig
P.S. the folks who can't afford cable mostly live in adjacent
counties, and work for the University for about $7 an hour.
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