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New York, LA & Washington D.C. Stations no longer avaliable outside the market on DirecTV


DENDude

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Beginning today June 14, 2020 at 6AM EDT DirecTV has dropped: KNBC, KABC, KCBS, WCBS, KTTV, WNBC, WABC, WNYW & WDCW.  Because congress didn't reauthorize the S.T.E.L.L.A.R. Act that allowed them to carry these stations.   They dropped them for 3 days back in April and then got an extension, but that extension has now expired.

 

They are running Info channels to let viewers know why these stations are no longer available.

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My family hasn’t had DTV in some years but I’m assuming these were the East Coast and West Coast alternate channels that were in the higher digits on the guide? IIRC, the local news on each of these stations didn’t air. They always had some message about local carriage during the local news slots but the network programming aired regularly. That could have changed because this was at least 10 years ago for me.

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I haven’t been on a United (Ex Continental) flight with DirecTV Service in a couple of years, but the WCBS, WNBC and WNYW feeds had local news (current Southwest flightS use Dish and have local news on all 3).

 

Unfortunately, no WABC onboard...

 

J

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Blame Washington on this one; the STELA act, which allowed out-of-market signals for certain cases (distant markets and vagabonds/retirees in RVs for instance), wasn't renewed, thus networks are free to do whatever they want. The other networks made secondary agreements with the other networks; Disney chose not to; I assume because they figure it's 2020, everyone has broadband, and they've been allowing local viewing of an ABC affiliate where available with provider credentials through the app or they can just call up whatever affiliate they want for their newscasts online. Satellite is a dying business and I guess that's what they figure.

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In a way, it's obsolete since virtually every market is now capable of local-into-local service, and with very few exceptions, virtually all markets now have access to local affiliates.

 

The only places where distant locals from NY & LA may even be needed is for marine and airplane viewing, bit those are so niche, that the ability to do so will likely come through a special feed tailored to the vessel or plane.

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On 6/15/2020 at 7:46 PM, tyrannical bastard said:

In a way, it's obsolete since virtually every market is now capable of local-into-local service, and with very few exceptions, virtually all markets now have access to local affiliates.

 

The only places where distant locals from NY & LA may even be needed is for marine and airplane viewing, bit those are so niche, that the ability to do so will likely come through a special feed tailored to the vessel or plane.

IIRC, I know that Dish has 100% local channel availability. AFAIK, DirecTV has a few markers where local channels aren’t available, like Glendive, Alpena, and even Presque Isle.

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On 6/15/2020 at 4:46 PM, tyrannical bastard said:

The only places where distant locals from NY & LA may even be needed is for marine and airplane viewing, bit those are so niche, that the ability to do so will likely come through a special feed tailored to the vessel or plane.

 

In-flight (and probably oceanic) satellite TV is rapidly moving to IP now that high speed Ku/Ka-band satellites (e.g. Viasat) are in place. Saves a lot of weight to just have one antenna on top of the plane and the associated gear and just stream it through the data connection. Southwest and American are already doing this—the programming is "provided" by Dish Network but it's not transported via their birds.

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9 hours ago, NEOMatrix said:

IIRC, I know that Dish has 100% local channel availability. AFAIK, DirecTV has a few markers where local channels aren’t available, like Glendive, Alpena, and even Presque Isle.

Not surprising that AT&T never finished the job.  Even YouTubeTV serves these markets, and for the most part, fills in the missing affiliates with some distant NBC O&Os (WBTS in Presque Isle and WMAQ in Alpena & Mankato) as well as an ABC feed for virtually every market that does not have their own affiliate (filling in ABC News Live content in local time slots).

 

Even their least-served market, Zanesville, OH has everything but CBS since they now pipe in WTTE from Columbus.

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Those snowbirds or migrated New Yorkers living in Florida won't be able to "move" their service address anymore since all NYC stations are on spot beam now. Ok I will admit I was a guilty "mover". I did it every time I PCSed (moved) duty stations to get more local stations and RSN team options plus I could get my physical local stations on an antenna. It was nice having Tampa stations in Orlando DMA, Mobile stations in Biloxi DMA, and Cincinnati then Columbus stations living in Dayton area. I just moved to Georgia and was going to "move" to Atlanta or Jacksonville area but I read that ever since AT&T took over Directv, their billing system changed to ATTs billing system used for U-Verse TV and Internet which makes calling to change your service address nearly impossible to do without a service technician coming to that address. This impacts RVers who have a dish already on their vehicle and people with vacation homes with an existing dish. All they had to do was call and say they are at a campground or their vacation home and the CSR would change the address now that not the case and most of the CSRs are outsourced to the Philippines now.

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