why media consolidation is NOT a good thing

[Scott Fybush]

>In the Sinclair station, the likelihood is that there is no other station in
>the market that will pick up Nightline for this one night. Most viewers,
>even those with dishes and cable, will not be able to watch it because these
>companies carry just the local feed. (I could be wrong on the dish
>companies, maybe they have a full streaming national feed as well? I don't
>recall that being the case when my ex-roommates and I had Dish Network a few
>years back.) The choice is being made for these viewers by suits in Hunt
>Valley.

Network affiliations are still market-exclusive - if I'm Sinclair and I 
contract with ABC to be the ABC affiliate for Pensacola/Mobile, for 
example, my contract gives me exclusivity that includes satellite and cable 
delivery. Dish and DirecTV can only provide their "national networks" 
package (which gives ABC/CBS/NBC/Fox service from New York or LA, depending 
on time zone) to customers who are - or pretend to be - in "white areas" 
that can't receive a network's affiliate over the air adequately. So 
there's no "magic second ABC" option for dish customers in Sinclair 
markets, either.

Some cable companies do carry out-of-market network affiliates because 
they're grandfathered; if, for instance, my cable company in Rochester 
hadn't dropped ABC/CBS/NBC from Buffalo and NBC from Syracuse back in the 
mid-80s (they were basically there to fill out the 30-channel lineup back 
in the days when there were about eight satellite networks available, plus 
the NYC superstations; heck, we even got WSBK for a few years here), they'd 
still be allowed - required, IIRC - to carry them.

s