[Ip-health] Dow Jones: DirecTV: High Costs For Rural Satellite TV

[Thiru Balasubramaniam]

<SNIP>

It would cost DISH Network Corp.(DISH) $100 million to beam local
television signals into the 29 U.S. markets it currently doesn't
serve, according to testimony offered to the U.S. Senate Commerce
Committee Wednesday.

Local television broadcasting for satellite subscribers in all 210
designated U.S. TV markets is a priority for lawmakers who are
renewing a complex satellite licensing system. The compulsory license
expires this year and renewal is considered a "must-pass."


-----

     * OCTOBER 7, 2009, 1:22 P.M. ET

UPDATE: DISH, DirecTV: High Costs For Rural Satellite TV


(Updates with additional details, starting in seventh paragraph.)

    By Fawn Johnson
    Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES


WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)--It would cost DISH Network Corp.(DISH) $100
million to beam local television signals into the 29 U.S. markets it
currently doesn't serve, according to testimony offered to the U.S.
Senate Commerce Committee Wednesday.

Local television broadcasting for satellite subscribers in all 210
designated U.S. TV markets is a priority for lawmakers who are
renewing a complex satellite licensing system. The compulsory license
expires this year and renewal is considered a "must-pass."

DISH Executive Vice President Stanton Dodge said at a hearing that
unserved markets are sparsely populated, making it difficult for
satellite providers to justify a business case for offering service.

"The decision to provide a local NBC affiliate to a few thousand
subscribers precludes DISH from providing a new national service, a
high definition channel, or an international Spanish-language offering
to 13 million subscribers," Dodge said.

DirecTV Group Inc. (DTV) offers local service into about 152 markets.
DirecTV Senior Vice President Robert Gabrielli said it would cost
roughly $2 million to expand service into each unserved market.

DirecTV and DISH, the two largest satellite providers in the country,
are in talks with Congress and the National Association of
Broadcasters to come to agreement on some type of cost sharing
arrangement for beaming local TV stations into unserved markets.

NAB disputes that it would cost upwards of $100 million to bring local
TV via satellite into all U.S. markets. Earlier this year, the
chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Telecommunications
Subcommittee, Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., estimated that it would cost
roughly $30 million collectively to extend satellite service to
unserved markets.

NAB is insistent, however, that distant channels be beamed into
markets only in the most isolated of cases, saying it would harm local
TV stations to compete with duplicative signals.

DISH also is hoping lawmakers will lift a federal court order barring
it from broadcasting network signals that originate from outside a
subscriber's area. That order stems from an earlier lawsuit involving
Echostar Corp. (SATS), which is now an equipment provider for DISH and
other telecom firms.

Echostar spun off from DISH in 2008, and the two entities largely
operate as two different companies, but they share the same CEO.

Echostar was accused by broadcasters in the suit of illegally
providing distant channels to its subscribers.

DirecTV isn't operating under a similar court order.

Federal law allows satellite companies to provide rural subscribers
with distant broadcast networks if they can't otherwise obtain a local
broadcast channel.



------------------------------------------------------------


Thiru Balasubramaniam
Geneva Representative
Knowledge Ecology International (KEI)
thiru@keionline.org


Tel: +41 22 791 6727
Mobile: +41 76 508 0997