The more people that run out and buy HDTV the more valuable HD content becomes and a few
savvy greedy media companies intend to capitalize on it. Of course the Cable companies have been carrying these local channels for years and haven't been paying a dime, so they are obviously not too keen on the idea of paying to carry local channels. This
isn't anything new, but as more and more people buy HDTV's it will be a bigger issue. Mediacom (a cable company) is pulling all of their Sinclair channels from their lineup after not being able to come to an agreement. Belo is at it again after trying to charge
Charter for KMOV in St Louis, this time it's WFAA in Fort Worth. For the sake of our cable bills lets hope all the cable companies hold their position and refuse to the pay ransom. In the meantime, you can get by
with an antenna, but don't tell Belo or Sinclair. If your trying to figure out why your local channel isn't carried in HD by your cable company you may want to check out
Belo's site to see if they own them.
Read -
Mediacom: Sinclair Says Pull PlugRead -
Charter pulls WFAA in HD[Thanks, Chip]
posted Jan 6th 2007 6:15PM
I have to pay extra to Charter to get the local channels that they get for free? Why should Charter get all the money? That money they're charging HD users should be used to pay the locals. Charter shouldn't profit off free content.
Cable companies such as Charter actually do not make any profit from the local channels. Even the HD versions of those channels. The Money that is charged for local service generally goes to fees, copyright fees, taxes, and the actual cost of deliverying you the local channel signal. These fees go to your city in the form of Franchise Fees, Public Access Fees City Taxes and Sin/Amusement Taxes in some areas; State Sales Taxs; Copyright Fees and Music Liciensing Fees, etc. Most city franchise fee aggreements limit how much can be charged for local service and it is intended to be a "break even" cost.
Did you know that when you watch a local commercial on your local tv station such as ABC, your cable provider pays a fee to the music industry for the any music in that commercial. When you subscribe to cable tv, your cable tv companie pays a quarterly fee to the library of congress for coypyright fees on the programming provided by your local stations. If you happen to get a local channel from a different city such as WGN out of chicago but you live in Kansas City, your cable company pays a higher copyright fee for the programming on that station.
The issue is not the rates that the cable companies are charging but rather keeping the rates down. If cable providers had to begin to pay fees on local channels, you as the consumer would be paying those fees in higher cable rates. Most cable companies are under a break even model when it comes to thier programming, it is only on pay per view, channels such as HBO and showtime, and other services such as equipment leasing, phone service, internet that the companies actually make a profit, if any...
Add LIN Television to that list. After they bought our formerly-Emmis FOX affiliate in Green Bay, I was hopeful we'd see FOX HD on Time Warner. No dice. They aren't even letting DirecTV have it and they just launched Green Bay's HD locals not too long ago.
And at least with our Time Warner branch, we get local HD without paying extra. Our HDTV's have QAM capable tuners so we don't need to lease the digital box. If we don't pay TWC extra, I don't want LIN charging me. (And no, we don't get decent enough reception where we live to use an antenna)