At 1:32 PM -0500 1/26/06, William Smith wrote: >Craig... > >Please see the KET web site.. > >http://www.ket.org/dtv > The .org says it all. PBS affiliates are in a very good position to capitalize on the DTV transition; multicasts allow stations to proliferate content to different audiences at the same time. But commercial broadcasters do not have the same options as public broadcasters. A commercial network affiliate cannot provide multiple access points to most network programs, and they must pay for each run of the syndicated programming they use to fill out their schedules. For what it is worth, I think that PBS is on the right track here. Ratings may even be going up as the checkerboarding of programs allow affiliates to accumulate audiences rather that playing the old "appointment TV" game. Maybe affiliates could even have one channel in the multiplex exclusively for selling "memberships." ;-) Out of curiosity, what do you do during membership drives? does the entire multiplex revert to the single program stream that is soliciting membership fees? Perhaps the next step for commercial broadcasters is to push for memberships... But why bother, when you can have the cable and DBS companies just force every subscriber to pay a monthly fee for your channel? Regards Craig ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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.