DanteEXT
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Local News Is Being Pushed Up a Creek as a Casualty of the Streaming Wars | Opinion
"The most important attribute of having a broadcast license is that it allows the station to broadcast "over-the-air" and thus theoretically reach an entire market not just those who access cable or satellite service. That was truly meaningful when all households had antennas, but as almost all television reception became via cable or satellite over the last 40 years, many people no longer have them. Most recently, household antenna sales have picked up again, with some 8 million having been sold last year. They are now small, cheap, (around $25), and very effective in terms of quality reception in most areas. The problem is that smart TV's interfaces—for instance how the various TV apps are presented on your Samsung TV or through a Roku device—require you to select a separate input to even see what's available. That relegates local stations to a television "purgatory" that few people even know to go visit.
If the FCC mandated that each local station be presented in the same interface as one sees streaming apps such as Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime etc., it is easy to conceive of a household diet consisting of three or four streaming services side-by-side with all the local stations in the market."
I wish my locals had a streaming option for their entire broadcast (main and sub-channels). Or maybe just set up a repeater-type system so that everyone in the market could actually get the signal. I had an antenna at my old place, and I loved it. Unfortunately, where I moved to is a terrible spot for reception. I tested an antenna and got exactly what the Rabbit Ears website said: a CBS station, PBS, and ION.
But you know, local networks could have done this on their own without needing a mandate (though it probably would have to be necessary). I mean, they had to see the writing on the wall regarding cable and the loss of all those retransmission fees. Before Locast got shut down a few years ago, they should have worked with them. Would they have made as much as those transmission fees? No, but they could have had another small revenue stream and possibly even helped get more people to use it. Of course the big networks would have been against it I am sure.
"The most important attribute of having a broadcast license is that it allows the station to broadcast "over-the-air" and thus theoretically reach an entire market not just those who access cable or satellite service. That was truly meaningful when all households had antennas, but as almost all television reception became via cable or satellite over the last 40 years, many people no longer have them. Most recently, household antenna sales have picked up again, with some 8 million having been sold last year. They are now small, cheap, (around $25), and very effective in terms of quality reception in most areas. The problem is that smart TV's interfaces—for instance how the various TV apps are presented on your Samsung TV or through a Roku device—require you to select a separate input to even see what's available. That relegates local stations to a television "purgatory" that few people even know to go visit.
If the FCC mandated that each local station be presented in the same interface as one sees streaming apps such as Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime etc., it is easy to conceive of a household diet consisting of three or four streaming services side-by-side with all the local stations in the market."
I wish my locals had a streaming option for their entire broadcast (main and sub-channels). Or maybe just set up a repeater-type system so that everyone in the market could actually get the signal. I had an antenna at my old place, and I loved it. Unfortunately, where I moved to is a terrible spot for reception. I tested an antenna and got exactly what the Rabbit Ears website said: a CBS station, PBS, and ION.
But you know, local networks could have done this on their own without needing a mandate (though it probably would have to be necessary). I mean, they had to see the writing on the wall regarding cable and the loss of all those retransmission fees. Before Locast got shut down a few years ago, they should have worked with them. Would they have made as much as those transmission fees? No, but they could have had another small revenue stream and possibly even helped get more people to use it. Of course the big networks would have been against it I am sure.
