LPTV and Translators and CATV Must Carry

[Poledo]

I understand that translators had must carry status up until sometime in the '80's. Is that true?

What are the chances of the FCC giving LPTV stations and translators any sort of must carry? Perhaps they could give the LPTVs must carry status if the station could provide a perfect signal to the cable head end but deny LPTVs the right to ask for any compensation... Of course this may prove to be too expensive for low budget LPTVs if they had to provide a T1 line or set up a microwave relay.

 

[w9wi]

I understand that translators had must carry status up until sometime in the '80's. Is that true?

What are the chances of the FCC giving LPTV stations and translators any sort of must carry? Perhaps they could give the LPTVs must carry status if the station could provide a perfect signal to the cable head end but deny LPTVs the right to ask for any compensation... Of course this may prove to be too expensive for low budget LPTVs if they had to provide a T1 line or set up a microwave relay.

I'm going on memory here so don't take me 100% literally but...

I don't think translators ever had must-carry status.

LPTV stations do have must-carry protection in very limited circumstances:

• The LPTV must meet the minimum operating schedule regulations applicable to full-power stations.
• The LPTV must be within 35 miles of the cable headend and must provide a good quality signal to the headend. (IIRC the latter provision has been interpreted as allowing the LPTV to pay for a fiber/microwave feed to the headend)
• The LPTV city-of-license and the cable community must both be outside the largest 160 metropolitan areas, as of 6/30/1990.
• The cable community's population as of 6/30/1990 must be 35,000 or less.
• There must be no full-power station licensed to the county in which the cable community is located.
• The LPTV must provide local news & information that's not being provided by full-power stations.

Cable operators can voluntarily carry LPTVs. I would imagine that almost always happens only when the LPTV operator leases a channel. Two LPTV stations are on cable in Milwaukee - they obviously are not covered by the requirements above. They are both co-owned with two full-power stations and I suspect the LPTVs got carriage as part of the retransmission-consent negotiations for the full-power stations.

 

[fybush]

Cable operators can voluntarily carry LPTVs. I would imagine that almost always happens only when the LPTV operator leases a channel. Two LPTV stations are on cable in Milwaukee - they obviously are not covered by the requirements above. They are both co-owned with two full-power stations and I suspect the LPTVs got carriage as part of the retransmission-consent negotiations for the full-power stations.

There's another circumstance under which an LPTV is all but guaranteed cable carriage - when it's carrying one of the big 4 networks in a market! I'm pretty sure the CBS, ABC and Fox stations in Lima, Ohio - all LPTVs - are on the cable there. (I know they will be once they're acquired by WLIO, the full-power NBC/CW outlet in town.)

The South Bend ABC, CW and My LPTVs are all on the cable, for sure.

 

[MarcB]

WRDM-LP channel 50 in Hartford is the only LPTV station on COMCAST and COX in Central CT. They're an affiliate of Telemundo and Jewelery TV. Both systems have carried the station since its days as W13BF.

In Western Mass they carried 2 LPTV stations on the cable systems WSHM-LP channel 67 the CBS station in Springfield and WHTX-LP channel 43 the Univsion affiliate. Both however were so weak reception of the stations at the head-end were so poor that they now pick up WSHM-LP via Channel 3.2 out of Hartford and WHTX-LP via Channel 18.2 The LPTV stations replaced WFSB and WUVN respectively. WSHM-LP runs its own programming while WHTX-LP is a 100% simulcast of WUVN.

As for Dish Network, for some reason WHCT-LP 38 in Hartford is carried as part of the local channels package. The reception is so terrible I doubt anyone is watching it. (Though I don't know why anyone would watch Azteca America anyway. It's not as good as Telemundo, Univision, and Telefutura). Dish Network is obviously picking up this station somehow with an antenna. In the summer its really bad. You can see WSBK/38 bleeding through on WHCT. Sometimes reception gets so bad that Dish Network yanks the station and puts up "Please do not call us. We're aware this station is having Problems and we will return it as soon as possible".

 

[Markxxx]

In some ways I favour it but in otherways I don't like the idea. As a person who will have to get cable after the switch to digital, cause I can get analog but not digital signals where I live, I see us eventually going to a pay TV system.

Now Comcast will give me basic stations for $10.00 a month, so it's not the money but it's the point of having to pay for something I got free.

If you have smaller LPTV and translators being carried as a "must carry" then the next step for the networks is simply to eliminate the affiliations all together and just feed the network off the satellites.

I don't see that happen anytime soon but in 20 years perhaps.

A lot of LPTV are carried as a result of negotiation. For instance if a FOX affiliate has a LPTV which carries the CW or MyNetworkTV they can say, in order to carry us as a Fox affiliate you have to carry the two low powers.

 

[jal41]

In Atlanta, two LPTV's are carried on Comcast's digital lineup. WUVM-LP/4 (Azteca America) on 249 and 532 and WDTA-LP/53 (Daystar) on 263. WUVM is also on DirecTV.

Don't expect cable companies to jump on carriage on LPTV and full power digital subchannels unless they are tied to a ful-power big-4 station as part of a retransmission agreement (In Milwaukee, one of those full-power stations is the CBS affiliate), or an LPTV is a big 4 with the power to take the cable company to the FCC or a courtroom over exclusive rights. The idea of the FCC mandates on carriage riles up the cable companies.

Digital cable systems do have the capability to support every broadcast signal and stream in a market, whereas analog does not. Mandatory carriage on a digital system should not be that big of deal. I can understand the issues with analog systems.

 

[w9wi]

Digital cable systems do have the capability to support every broadcast signal and stream in a market, whereas analog does not. Mandatory carriage on a digital system should not be that big of deal. I can understand the issues with analog systems.

In the editorial comment department 8) IMHO cable systems should be required to deliver to each subscriber every OTA signal that delivers to that subscriber at least as much signal as the weakest of the Big 5 (including PBS) affiliates. Including LPTVs. (but not stations that are a 100% relay of another required station) Including analog systems. It's been a VERY long time since we've had 12-channel cable systems... EVERYONE has room for all the OTA signals. If that means they don't have enough room for all the premium movie and sports channels they want to carry, let them expand their system.

Obviously it will never happen.

Cable exists today because OTA broadcasters were forced to allow cable to use their copyrighted broadcasts without charge. Now that cable has become well established, they want to cut loose as many OTA stations as possible. It wouldn't run them out of business to carry a few more LPTVs and DTV subchannels.

 

[kenglish]

.....As a person who will have to get cable after the switch to digital, cause I can get analog but not digital signals where I live, I see us eventually going to a pay TV system.
Now Comcast will give me basic stations for $10.00 a month, so it's not the money but it's the point of having to pay for something I got free.

Mark,
I see that you live in Chicago, so I find it hard to believe there aren't any DTV stations broadcasting there . But, in your previous posts, you say that you got three stations with a converter box, and now get none on your new TV set.
That sounds like a problem with the new set, not just reception issues.

Have you had anyone with proper test gear come out and check your system? I'm finding that many reception problems are due to overload, not weak signals.

As for the TV set, is it set up properly? We found (last week) that some new Sony HDTVs our IT guys bought, would not scan for 8VSB OTA channels (using the "Simple 1-2-3 Setup mode"), because they scan for CATV analog channels first, and they found something in the CATV mid-band. So, the sets assumed they were on Cable and only searched for QAM signals.
We found that we had to go deeper in to the setup menu to a page where we could specify "OTA Channelization".

Also, most sets and tuners are being designed with single-conversion tuners, which the FCC and others are finding to be very susceptible to interference from various channel combinations, when operated at certain levels.

Maybe the engineers from one of your local stations would like to do some troubleshooting.