Re: No Fox affilate for Bangor after all

[Garrett Wollman <wollman>]

<<On Tue, 9 Oct 2001 20:46:12 -0400, Paul Anderson <plandrsn@ma.ultranet.com> said:

> Where is the dividing line?  Mansfield and Foxboro are both in the 
> Boston market, although closer to Providence than, say, Milton.  Is 

There is more than one standard.  If Nielsen or the FCC says that your
county is in the XYZ DMA then all of the XYZ stations are must-carry
for any system that serves that county, provided that each station is
able to deliver an acceptable-quality signal to the system's headend.
But, if your system is located within the grade A contour of a
station, that station has must-carry rights regardless of what market
it's considered to be in.  Bristol Co. is in the Providence market,
and Norfolk Co. is in the Boston market, but there are parts of both
that are subject to must-carry for both the Boston TVs in Needham and
the Providence TVs in Rehoboth.

But wait, it gets better.  Any station that was carried using
over-the-air pickup by a cable system five or ten years before the
1994 Cable Act was passed has automatic must-carry rights regardless
of what sort of signal it now delivers or what market it is in.

All stations electing must-carry have the right to select their
channel position to be the same as their broadcast channel, or the one
they were on when the Cable Act was enacted, or the one they were on
ten years before the Cable Act.  Stations electing retrans consent are
left to work that issue out with the cable company.

Non-commercial educational stations have a restricted form of
must-carry (up to three signals per market), no retrans consent, no
syndex, and no network exclusivity.  That's why most systems in the
Boston area get either channel 11 or channel 36 in addition to the
locals, and similarly systems in Hartford and Springfield get both 24
and 57, and systems in the Champlain Valley get 33 and 57.  Canadian
signals do not have must-carry rights in the U.S., but the CRTC has
plenary authority over which U.S. signals are to be carried on which
systems in Canada.  (Cable systems are licensed ``broadcast
distribution undertakings'' in Canada, and the selection of broadcast
channels is a condition of license,)

-GAWollman