Sinclair

[H2O]

Hi All

I just saw a crawl on the weather channel that says that my cable providers contract with Sinclair ends on March 1 and they may have to pull several of the local broadcast channels. I spoke to a friend who knows a little more about this situation and he say it all boils down to this.

Sinclair wants cable providers to charge customers more for bandwidth that is provided for free over the air. Now granted, the locals do cost about $10- $13, but evidently, Sinclair apparently thinks they deserve more money (for bandwidth they get for free).

[blogslut]

1. Isn't this part of that

whole "TV Freedom" campaign? Is is tied in with the tier-priced internet push by media/telco conglomerates?

[KharmaTrain]

2. Sinclair Are Top Notch Boooshlickers

First...your local cable system can't pull local over-the-air channels...(ABC, Fox, CBS, NBC, PBS) due to "must carry laws". What it sounds like is Sinclair is trying to play hardball with the "cable providers" (Weather Channel, CNN and others). Thanks to De-Reg '96, your cable operator has the right to yank and pull those channels and sell them to the highest bidder.

The nut of this problem is the long running practice of cable providers paying the program providers and how many of these providers think it should be the other way around. Instead of them paying CNN, it should be the other way around. Another battle front is the coming digital shut-off/conversion in 2009. For many, the only way they'll be able to watch TV will be via cable and the operators want to be able to make bucks off of this...charging you for the High Definition picture more than for the standard one.

Sinclair itself is a right wing corporation that was famous for their "News Center" and the infamous Kerry slimeboat smear during the '04 campaign. Times haven't been good for Sinclair since. Their advertising revenues have gone south, expensese and debt have soared and their stock price is hoving around the price of a good penny stock. This is just another shakedown...another attempt for the providers...and then passed onto to you...to pay for their reckless spending.

[Pab Sungenis]

5. You're a little confused on must-carry.

Stations have two options: they can elect for "must carry," which forces the cable systems to carry them, OR they can charge a fee for cable operators to carry their signals.

Unfortunatley, in many markets the only stations forcing must carry are infomercial, shop-at-home, and pay-for-pray operations. A lot of network affiliates are forcing cable operators to pay for their stations.

One option: pick up a good antenna and a Digital Television Tuner. If you have a TV bought this past year, odds are there's an ATSC (DTV) tuner built in. If you're relatively close to a major city, you can get the networks crystal clear over the air for free.

[B Calm]

3. Direct won't even offer me local channels. They say I have to live

in an area where I can get cable. Sorry but this don't make any sense at all.

[NotGivingUp]

4. we should all tell cable companies to stick it where the sun don't shine

it's nothing but a bunch of crap anyway.