Tom Barry wrote: > As you say the more popular (mostly network affiliate) broadcasters > are afraid of competing with cable because if they offend cable they > probably cannot get retrans consent dollars. Let's assume for a minute that a station group that owns network affiliates DID NOT get any retrans consent dollars. How close would they be to breaking even with just the ad revenues, as of now? Now change that equation slightly. Let's assume that the station group has a national footprint vs a max of 39 percent coverage. How much more attractive would that station group be to advertizers? Now let's diddle with the costs. Can the station group share its local news and weather crews, either with other local stations, or reinvent these "local" crews into more of a regional model? For example, how hard would it be for the weather team to cover not just the one market, but perhaps the entire NE US? And transmit the same weather program from all of that station group's stations in the NE? Or just forego the local news and weather entirely, leaving that to another broadcaster? Now let's diddle with operating costs. How hard would it be for a station group to run the vast majority of its OTA transmitters remotely? Perhaps outsource the transmitter and tower maintenance to local companies that do this work for all of the OTA stations? (I assume much of this is already being done?) In other words, why can't OTA stations operate more like MVPDs? 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.