This weekend, I found that LIN TV Corporation, formerly LIN Broadcasting, has demanded a 175% increase in fees to Dish Network, for the latter to pay so that they may rebroadcast Fox 10 TV in the local Mobile, AL area. There were also 27 stations in 17 cities that "went dark". Dish Network says that they have tried negotiating with LIN, but all calls are now being ignored....and Fox 10 TV's signal is now blocked from Dish Network by LIN. It seems both are blaming one another...see this link:
http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory?id=13065858
Since the digital TV changeover, this particular TV station's signal to my area of the boondocks leaves MUCH to be desired. We are about to enter hurricane season in a few months and we here on the Gulf Coast need to be able to gather as much weather information, from as many sources, as possible. Fox 10 here in Mobile has a very good weather staff, as well as a news staff, and I am well aquainted with the weekday morning news anchor. Both of us have a love of radio and he was a radio station owner in the past. He even remembers KAAY when he was stationed abroad with the Air Force....
Hopefully, Dish Network and LIN TV Corporation can hammer out their differences. I'll be contacting LIN myself shortly....
Bud S. (staceys4@hotmail.com)
Bud,
ReplyDeleteThis is the typical greed by both Dish (which I am also a pay tv subscriber) and WALA. WALA "FOX 10" broadcasts its OTA signal on VHF channel 9 and remaps to "10-1".
The main issues with "digital television" have been underpowered VHF transmitters and the electrical interference which is more common with VHF signals than UHF. I will never give up my OTA antennas and made sure I was prepared to have a fringe setup that would work with everyday TV watching as well as DXing.
Here are a couple of links. Coverage map by Google via FCC TV Query
http://maps.google.com/?q=http://www.fcc.gov/fcc-bin/contourplot.kml?gmap=2%26appid=1050716%26call=WALA-TV%26freq=0.0%26contour=36%26city=MOBILE%26state=AL
FCC TV Query on WALA "FOX 10"
http://www.fcc.gov/fcc-bin/tvq?list=0&facid=4143
Bottom line, both Lin (WALA) and Dish are wrong on this issue, but the viewers are always the losers in these retransmission catfights since those living in fringe coverage areas and apartments cannot receive a usable OTA signal.