LOCAST

[KeithAbbott]

I can see it now:

ABC OTA: $2.99/month
ABC OTA/Disney+: $7.99/month
ABC OTA/Disney+/ESPN/hulu: $13.99/month

NBC OTA: $2.99/month
NBC OTA/Peacock Premium: $4.99/month
NBC OTA/Peacock Premium Plus: $9.99/month

And so on, and so forth...

[Malfunction]

Originally Posted by KeithAbbott

I wonder how many more years until the networks figure out how to charge for their OTA service. It's gotta be killing them to give anything away for free.

All they have to do is continue putting out a weaker signal with every repack, thereby forceing the customers into CATV and Satellite.

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by KeithAbbott

I wonder how many more years until the networks figure out how to charge for their OTA service. It's gotta be killing them to give anything away for free.

Isn't it part of their FCC license to broadcast that it is free? That's why they are ALLOWED to run commercials, if I remember my Red and Blue channels from history. In the U.K., your yearly license fee pays for OTA, but are they allowed to run commercials at The Beeb and Ch 4?

[wayner]

That's why they are allowed to use the RF spectrum. It seems silly to me that other rebroadcasters, like cable, have to pay for local OTA channels. They should have cable tiers with everything except OTA channels as anyone who wants can use an antenna to pull them in.

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by wayner

That's why they are allowed to use the RF spectrum. It seems silly to me that other rebroadcasters, like cable, have to pay for local OTA channels. They should have cable tiers with everything except OTA channels as anyone who wants can use an antenna to pull them in.

Do they HAVE to pay for them, or does the public demand cable supply the OTA channels, hence, that revenue stream you were talking about - Disney doesn't give ABC away for free to Comcast, do they?

[wayner]

I think they used to be free but starting several years ago the cable/sat companies had to start paying for the channels. So Comcast pays ABC. Or rather, Comcast pays ABC a fee that they collect from you, the end viewer.

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by wayner

I think they used to be free but starting several years ago the cable/sat companies had to start paying for the channels. So Comcast pays ABC. Or rather, Comcast pays ABC a fee that they collect from you, the end viewer.

Yes, that’s my understanding of it too.
It infuriates me because in theory, broadcast tv makes its money from advertising and their ad rates are based on the size of their audience. So it should be to their advantage to have cable re-broadcast their content to a wider audience. Really, if anything, they should be paying the cable operators, not the other way around.