Quote:
Originally posted by pgnewarkboy
I don't get it. Do cable companies pay for regular programming? I think the FCC should force CBS to put HD on Cable. |
As I understand it, yes, they do, for some of it. The FCC rule is "Must Carry/Can Carry". As far as I can tell, it means that if any local station wants to be carried on cable (like a local PBS affiliate), it can insist--that's the "Must Carry" part.
Carriage of the major CBS, ABC, NBC, Fox , UPN and WB affiliates is essential to the success of the cable systems operator and those companies can demand payment from the cable SOs for the privilege of carrying them.
The local national network affiliates are being forced by the FCC to implement DTV. During the transition, they're having to go to the extra expense of broadcasting two simulataneous signals, one of which is utilized by a relative handful of their viewers. No one is giving them additional funds to do this--it just cuts into their bottom line. It's understandable that they'd try to recoup some of this in fees from the cable companies (whose subscribers are some 70% of all television viewers).
The paradox in this is that the television stations have been pushing the FCC to
require the cable SOs to carry both their analog
and DTV channels (this is called "Dual Must Carry"). Without cable carriage, only a handful of people with DTV-capable sets will watch DTV. So far, I think it's been running around 10% (sales of DTV tuners vs sales of DTV-capable monitors). Owners of DTV-capable sets represent only a very small percentage of all television watchers and owners of DTV tuners are only a fraction of those. Now that the major cable companies have committed to carrying at least 5 local DTV channels each in major markets by the end of the year, you'd think that affiliates would readily just give them the digital feed.
I read somewhere recently (probably in these forums somewhere) that one of the nationals was threatening to pull its HD programming if some form of IP protection wasn't agreed to soon. I think that it was CBS. This is interesting, since they were the main broadcaster proponent of DTV since its inception.
-- Mike Scott