FCC Investigating Home Shopping Programming on Broadcast Channels

[vibe]

I live about 40 mi from Boston, 30 mi from Providence. We only receive 1 station from Providence although many more can be received with rabbit ears/indoor bow ties. Why? because it's more profitable for cable companies to air shopping and religious channels.

 

[dhett]

But you're always able to get the Providence channels over the air. The cable company hasn't stopped you from doing anything.

 

[Markxxx]

I live about 40 mi from Boston, 30 mi from Providence. We only receive 1 station from Providence although many more can be received with rabbit ears/indoor bow ties. Why? because it's more profitable for cable companies to air shopping and religious channels.

Well you have to look at it from the station standpoint. They sign a deal with a network or get programing to be the EXCLUSIVE distributor of that program in a designated area. How would you like it if you opened up a Starbucks signed an agreement that stated Starbucks wouldn't agree to open up a Starbucks within a 3 mile radius and a week later Starbucks allows another guy to open a Starbucks.

(Yeah I know a bad example 3 mile radius for a Starbucks LOL)

I enjoy watching out of market stations for their news, but you can see that on the Internet now a days in a lot of markets.

 

[TexasTom]

> And it goes beyond the secondary PBS frequencies sold-off in the Albany and Buffalo, NY areas in the late 90s and early 2000s which returned to commercial status after years of operating as non-commercial stations (though the FCC never designated them as non-commercial licenses) or the secondary KERA-Dallas license sold to Daystar a couple years ago.

That's been going on for a while. KOKH/25 in Oklahoma City and KCPQ/13 in Tacoma/Seattle both used to be secondary public TV stations in their markets. Both went commercial around 1980.

I don't know how much controversy the KOKH sale stirred up, but I can tell you that the KCPQ sale got a lot of folks stirred up. It was regular front page news in the "Tacoma News Tribune" for almost two years -- and created a royal battle at the FCC between the school district selling the station (and the buyer) on one side, and a group called "Save Our Station" on the other side.

As for WQEX in Pittsburgh -- there's been controversy surrounding this particular station for many years. I'm not surprised that it is at the center of this one. However, this shouldn't be construed as an attack on home shopping over broadcast television stations -- no matter how appropriate that might be, there is little to suggest that the FCC is going to go into that particular battle at this time.

 

[researchthis]

The home shopping channels are taking advantage of the must carry rule and teaming with struggling over the air outlets to get good lower-channel placement. MTV Networks is doing the same thing with MTV Tres.

Except that most of the stations carrying MTV Tr3s (and, to a similar extent, MTV2) are LPTVs, which are not qualified for must-carry. Only full-powered stations have must-carry protection.

I wonder why Directv gave us in metro Atlanta the LP channel 4.

WUVM-LP -- Azteca
Atlanta (Fulton) GA
B'casting power: 2.5 kW

This signal does not even cover the city of Atlanta proper, but yet it gets local designated channel 4 on my system.....I didnt even know it existed until it just showed up one day. :

 

[ssetta]

I'm wondering if one day, WGBX-44 Boston will be sold. Most of the programming they air are the non-popular shows that WGBH doesn't show.

 

[jegrant]

I'm pretty sure that the Azteca affiliate on channel 4 is on DirecTV because of a network deal - IIRC, Azteca requires all local affiliates to be carried before a provider can offer the national feed to those without a local station. Basically it's a package deal.

Also - WGBH seems to be doing okay with money - and having WGBX is more digital bandwidth that they can use after the transition.