[RTC List] KEET-WORLD

[Sean McLaughlin]

RTC visits TV land!

Great arcane discussions of media policy and consumer impacts of
marketplace and regulation in the local "over the air" TV space that
impacts satellite, terrestrial broadcast, and cable TV operators and
consumers.

For those interested, with leadership of CAO Loretta Nickolaus and
after discussions with FCC staff regarding the DTV transition,
Humboldt County Board of Supervisors weighed in on the
"local-to-local" issue as relates to satellite operators, and that
message went to DC back in July 2009.  It's a well crafted Resolution
- attached FYI.

Just to highlight one point in the complex and murky discussion:

Local broadcast TV stations are generally not required to pay
compensation to cable systems for carriage.  Under "must carry" rules
designed to protect media Localism, broadcast TV stations are
guaranteed carriage on cable.  Broadcast TV stations are allowed to
waive the benefit of cable's "must carry" obligation if they choose to
negotiate for compensation.  There is not required compensation in the
"must carry" rules, just the option to waive the rules and negotiate
compensation.

And for those interested, the three founding principles of US media law are:
Competition, Diversity and Localism!

Folks engaged in media (producers & consumers) need to exercise
eternal vigilance to ensure that these three principles are upheld.

Aloha,
Sean

Sean McLaughlin
Executive Director
Access Humboldt
P.O. Box 157, Eureka, CA 95502
tel: 707-476-1798
dir: 707-476-2873
fax: 707-476-1702
cel: 707-616-2381
DC: 202-495-0616
e: sean at accesshumboldt.net
http://accesshumboldt.net
http://digitalredwoods.net

"Local Voices Through Community Media"




On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 3:18 AM, William Van Hefner
<vantek at humboldtonline.com> wrote:
> Ron,
>
> I apologize for any confusion. FCC regulations require that compensation
> paid to local TV broadcasters by cable companies is limited to COMMERCIAL
> TV stations, although they persistently fail to mention this distinction
> in their literature. I'm not sure on the background as to why
> non-commercial stations like KEET are the only ones exempt from being able
> to charge fees to local cable companies.
>
> As you mentioned, KEET has the right to demand a place on a preferential
> cable channel for their main signal, due to must carry rules, as do all
> other local broadcasters. The cable companies would much rather have basic
> cable networks like USA or TBS  on those channels though, since they are
> granted their own advertising slots on these networks during every single
> show. It is a major source of revenue for them. Suddenlink is not legally
> required to carry KEET's secondary DTV programming at all, let alone on a
> channel that anyone could find it at, so they won't. It has nothing to do
> with what people want to watch. It's about what makes the most money for
> the cable company, and they can't make any money on PBS programming.
>
> I wrote an article a number of months ago on the how the FCC's policies
> actually discourage local (commercial) broadcasters from providing quality
> over-the-air signals and how the rules affect local cable and satellite TV
> subscribers. For anyone interested in why it is that cable subscribers
> have to pay extra for local channels that the rest of us get for free, you
> can find the article at
> http://humboldtonline.com/hdtv/hdtv/local-tv-station-waivers/ .
>
>
> --
> William Van Hefner - President
> Vantek Communications, Inc.
> e-mail: editor at humboldtonline.com
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> List mailing list
> List at redwoodtech.org
> http://redwoodtech.org/mailman/listinfo/list_redwoodtech.org
>
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