[opendtv] Re: News: Northwest Station Pulls Signal In Retransmission Battle
- From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 5 Jan 2007 09:50:51 -0500
At 1:14 PM -0500 1/4/07, Tom Barry wrote:
How do the laws work on this? Is Gainesville somehow still by law
the exclusive territory of WESH? Or is it just a deal between Cox
and WESH where when contracts expire Cox could cut a deal for the
national network NBC if negotiations fail? If WESH can't be
received locally it doesn't seem fair they could restrict my ability
to get NBC/HD somewhere else (Cox willing).
I am not aware of any laws that are applicable to this situation.
Networks have complete control over the stations/markets where they
have affiliates. The stations negotiate the terms of the affiliation
agreement. NBC "could" decide that it is in their best interest to
add an affiliate in Gainesville, IF they believe that they are losing
audience share in the Gainesville market. I have no knowledge of any
deals between WESH and NBC regarding this matter. The deal between
WESH and Cox cable has been in place for several decades. WESH built
a microwave distribution system to get their signal(s) to the Ocala
and Gainesville markets. The same was true for CBS (WJXT
Jacksonville) until WJXT decided NOT to renew its affiliation
agreement with CBS. This caused CBS to look for new affiliates in
both Jacksonville AND Gainesville, or to be more exact, it put WGFL
in a strong bargaining position to get the CBS affiliation in
Gainesville.
At the moment the impasse between Cox and WESH is about additional
money for the rights to carry WESH HD, which presumably is not
covered under the existing re-trans agreement for WESH analog (Ch2).
To be fair to WESH, Cox does charge extra for the HD tier, so WESH is
just looking for a piece of the action.
Historically, you could get the National NBC feed from Dish or
DirecTV here in Gainesville, as WESH did not have adequate signal in
the market to block it. DISH does offer the local stations for
Gainesville, but there is no NBC affiliate in the line-up. I am not
certain of you can get the national NBC feed because of the current
problems Dish is having offering these feeds. I beleive that you can
get the national NBC feed from DirecTV but you cannot get the other
network national feeds because the local stations block it.
The real problem is that there is no alternative for NBC HD here in
Gainesville.
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.
Other related posts: