[opendtv] Re: OTA DTV experience
- From: "John Willkie" <johnwillkie@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2007 18:43:44 -0800
I doubt that cable systems drop local channels because they promote OTA
availability.
Why? Well, cable carries broadcast stations (within their market) either if
the station elects must-carry or if they reach a retrans agreement.
If they were to drop a station that elected must-carry, that would be
serious FCC trouble (remember Time-Warner NYC learned this in an expensive
way.)
If the station was carried pursuant to a retrans agreement and dropped a
station because of promotion of OTA, they would end up with a breach of
contract suit, possible anti-trust investigation, and possibly FCC trouble.
If the agreement was reached between the parties that the station wouldn't
promote OTA to reach an agreement, that raises serious public-policy issues.
The allusion was made here some time back that at least one cable system (I
smelled C**c**t) threatened to drop flights of commercials on broadcast
station(s) if the stations continued to promote OTA reception.
I smelled anti-trust/restraint of trade in that one.
By the way, these attitudes among cablers is somewhat unique in the U.S.;
vendors I have talked to say they find it nowhere else in the world.
Perhaps time will change that.
John Willkie
_____
From: opendtv-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:opendtv-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of flyback1
Sent: Monday, January 15, 2007 6:29 PM
To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [opendtv] Re: OTA DTV experience
Albert Manfredi wrote:
It seems that the 3-unit inventory is a chain-wide edict for Circuit City.
It continues to really astound me that the sort of good, low cost hardware
that would be likely to get people to try out DTT has been kept squirreled
away by some unknown group of GBs (greedy bas_____), for the past couple of
years or more. And even now, these same GBs are keeping it in short supply.
You don't suppose Circuit City and other Consumer Electronics stores are
being advised by the cable and satellite interests to keep the OTA box sales
low?
I heard some cable systems will drop a local service if the station promotes
it's OTA program availability.
To that end, all of the Philadelphia stations promote their digital 'cable'
channel numbers but never mention their OTA digital channels.
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