DISTANT LOCALS??

[cspiteri]

Years ago we were Dish subscribers who qualified for distant locals. Is that option no longer available or did I miss seeing it on their site??

 

[Bobby]

Years ago we were Dish subscribers who qualified for distant locals. Is that option no longer available or did I miss seeing it on their site??

If you are speaking of NY, SF, Denver, etc, no they are not available any longer. The FCC stepped in....

 

[cspiteri]

So what business was it of the FCC? Does DTV still offer the service or is there another way to get distant locals?

 

[Brussam]

DirecTV still offers DNS, East Coast or West Coast depending on your billing address. You no longer can get both.

It wasn't the FCC so much as the Broadcasters. But by having Locals in virtually all the DMAs, something DirecTV doesn't have, Dish could drop DNS and get rid of a major headache source from the Broadcasters.

 

[Mr Tony]

A. no such thing as "distant locals". Its distants
B. Dish lost the ability years ago. They were giving it to people who legally didn't qualify. The rule was if locals were available you couldn't get distants. If locals became available after you had distants you could keep them but if you made any changes to the programming you had to take locals. They (Dish) got sued and fought it til the end. Well they lost and the FCC barred them from offering ANY station outside of your market. If you had a "Short" market (not all 4 nets)...tough noogies.

A few years ago Dish cut a deal. If they offered ALL markets in SD at minimum then they could get the ban lifted. Well they did add all markets and now they can only import a station if there is no affiliate in the market.
edit: May 2010 is when they reached the deal
http://www.satelliteguys.us/xen/threads/dish-locals-launching-in-june.213309/

Meanwhile Directv did follow the rules back when Dish got sued so they are allowed to sell distants for RV'ers and people who legally qualify.

 

[Mr Tony]

There was a company called All American Direct that was (IMO) a shell company of Dish that did offer NY & SF networks in SD only. But that went away too (they were leasing one Transponder for Dish and Dish took that back)

 

[Mr Tony]

DirecTV still offers DNS, East Coast or West Coast depending on your billing address. You no longer can get both.

It was my understanding you couldnt get the distants that were in a earlier time zone anymore. So Mountain and Pacific addresses can only get West DNS whereas Central and Eastern could get both

 

[cspiteri]

Thanks, I think that answered my questions.

 

[cpalmer2k]

It was my understanding you couldnt get the distants that were in a earlier time zone anymore. So Mountain and Pacific addresses can only get West DNS whereas Central and Eastern could get both

That's the way the law is written, but DirecTV still won't let anyone who signed up after that 2010 revision went into effect get both

 

[Mary Lou Maloney]

So what business was it of the FCC? Does DTV still offer the service or is there another way to get distant locals?

Because the FCC has nothing better to other than to take out freedom of viewing away.

 

[Mr Tony]

well it took 8 posts for someone to spew "that line"

Lets go back in time...shall we?

Back in 1998 the FCC came up with SHVA (Satellite Home Viewer Act) which basically said if you can't get a Grade B signal and didn't sub to cable in the last 90 days you could get distants

In 2000 the FCC came up with SHVIA which allowed satellite companies to carry locals
Its been renewed a few times under new names
The rule basically stated that if you subscribed to locals you lost the ability to get distants. Simple as that. NO grey area.
(there are grandfathered rules but they are very few and far between now)

Meanwhile both Dish and Directv were still offering distants to folks who qualified (legally or waivers) while still allowing them to have locals. I was one of them. With Dish at one point I had Minneapolis locals AND ABC, FOX & NBC from 2 different cities (LA, Denver, Chicago were the cities I had distants from). I LEGALLY was out of the Grade B area for those nets but since I had locals through Dish I shouldn't have had those extra stations. But I did. If I remember right I had FOX from LA & Denver, ABC from Chicago and Denver and NBC from LA & NY along with Minneapolis locals.

The courts (the local broadcasters and the NAB) sued both Dish and DIrectv. Directv stopped doing it. Dish continued to defy the courts and they appealed and appealed until D-Day 12/1/06 when they were handed an injunction. Dish was forced to remove EVERY station not licensed in your market. So if you were a short market with missing nets? Tough.

By the way Dish got their heads in hot water for the infamous "split locals" where they would put "minor" (non Big 4 nets) on a wing dish requiring subs to either put 2 dishes on the roof or go without some locals. That was resolved too.

It took the FCC (the SAME FCC you are saying is taking away rights) which allowed Dish to import stations on the grounds they offered EVERY market (all 210 + Puerto Rico & USVI) in at least SD. Dish agreed and now they are allowed to offer stations imported ONLY in cases where there is no affiliate of a network in that market. Since Dish carries all 210 DMA's that goes back to the rule from SIXTEEN years ago of "if locals are available, no distants".

Directv can still allow distants to folks in 10 or so markets that don't have locals on satellite (but they still have to legally qualify or get waivers) and to RV folks (through an RV waiver)

 

[Brussam]

What Dish did not do and DirecTV did was to re-verify every DNS user as ordered by the court. Dish just said they were all grandfathered.

DirecTV dropped a lot of non-qualified DNS users and the Broadcasters were happy.

The courts never nailed Dish on giving DNS to non-qualified users, but because Dish did not provide proof of doing the verification

 

[bobvick]

There was a company called All American Direct that was (IMO) a shell company of Dish that did offer NY & SF networks in SD only. But that went away too (they were leasing one Transponder for Dish and Dish took that back)

All American Direct was a division of the old National Programming Service. NPS was one of the last TVRO third party packagers to go out of business.

 

[Mr Tony]

All American Direct was a division of the old National Programming Service.

while it was part of NPS I'm pretty sure Dish did most of the "string pulling" for AAD
(AAD was added right after Dish lost the rights to provide distants)

 

[Brussam]

Conspiracy theories amok. Interesting that AAD still provided services even after Dish startup up DNS services for a while. AAD offered HD DNS while Dish only offered SD DNS.

If Dish was running AAD, then Dish would have been competing with itself.

 

[pattykay]

What Dish did not do and DirecTV did was to re-verify every DNS user as ordered by the court. Dish just said they were all grandfathered.

DirecTV dropped a lot of non-qualified DNS users and the Broadcasters were happy.

The courts never nailed Dish on giving DNS to non-qualified users, but because Dish did not provide proof of doing the verification

I think the courts should have required some kind of advanced notice to each subscriber that our distants were in danger of being taken away, and given each subscriber an opportunity to submit paperwork directly to the court to prove that we qualified. One time, Dish accidentally took away my distants. I had to submit copies of all of my old Dish bills to Dish's waiver department to prove that I signed up for distants before the grandfathering deadline and kept subscribing to distants continuously since then, and I got my distants back. I would have gladly repeated that process, submitting the paperwork to the court, if it would have meant not having my distants taken away. Dish got in trouble because they could not prove that even one subscriber was grandfathered. I would have submitted that proof on my own behalf if I had been given the opportunity to do so.

 

[Brussam]

I think the courts should have required some kind of advanced notice to each subscriber that our distants were in danger of being taken away, and given each subscriber an opportunity to submit paperwork directly to the court to prove that we qualified.

That is what the courts did, Dish needed to contact and verify each DNS user to see if they qualified. Dish didn't. In reality, many of the questionable DNS users were in fact grand-fathered in having DNS before the FCC issued the restrictions.

 

[ChadT41]

I'll challenge Iceberg... You say that the FCC was protecting the the customer? Let's go back to 1992 that forces locals in a DMA. Anti consumer right there and causing the issues we have today. Allow a company or a consumer pick their local area by choice and force competition. Seems to be the argument for ala carte but nobody cares about that. Keeping locals alive my backside... You want an FCC that is better for the people, make their positions electable. Not appointable.

 

[Mr Tony]

I'll challenge Iceberg...

challenging me?

I basically posted how locals got on satellite and how distants went basically bye bye on dish

 

[Bobby]

You want an FCC that is better for the people, make their positions electable. Not appointable.

Yeah that really works in Washington.... The rest of the conversation can go to the Pit...