As I detail in another post, the percentage of households that depend on live OTA TV is significant and increasing due to inflation. That group has a high percentage of Hispanics and Black households, so there is a social and a political aspect to this subject that is a "third rail" which no network broadcaster wants to step on.
www.cnn.com
This doesn't make any sense. Are you saying that all the O&O's should just turn in their licenses and go to streaming platforms?
OTA viewing is still around 19% nationwide.
One source projects it approaching 25% by the end of the year if the current inflation does not mitigate. And, as I mentioned, the largest subsets of that group are Black and Hispanic, making the subject politically sensitive if not fully incendiary.
Good point for now the O&Os and contract affiliates are still profitable for now but for how long is the question.
Keep in mind that broadcast TV stations make a large portion of their income from carriage fees from cable and satellite. In my local market, just outside the top 100, the TV two significant TV station operators get over half of their revenue from those fees.
In the early 90s, besides ABC, CBS, Fox, local independent stations, and maybe PBS to a lesser extent, the only other real competition for the kids was Nickelodeon. Disney Channel was still a premium channel at this point, and Cartoon Network was still another year or so away from launching...it really wasn't until the advent of digital cable in the early 2000s that Nick, Disney, and CN were considered on "equal ground".
It depends on the time zone too. In the Pacific time zone the big 3 networks where I lived and sometimes Fox would always preempt cartoons for sports.
How many of those households can even pick up an OTA signal.
Or satellite, where it is not feasible to run cable to rural areas. I remember a proposal requiring satellite providers to supply the channels that used to be available over the air. There are some areas where even an antenna isn't dependable and you just know those areas won't be able to get cable.
Many are in urban areas with excellent TV signal strength, and TVs are cheap and don't require a monthly subscription fee. I'd say more can than can't.
There is no such thing as a must carry anymore. Since the networks opted to charge cable companies for their signals.
My cousin in Hartford can only get 3 and 30 and 61, and even that is spotty at best.
Didn't say there was. I said it was a proposal, and it didn't pass, but should.
That's what I was going to say, but then in cities with a lot of tall buildings, those buildings might mess up the signal. We're not dealing with analog TV which can easily overcome such problems.
The FCC dropped the ball with OTA signals.
