Broadcast television in an IP world

Fri Nov 17 22:45:59 UTC 2017

In the US certain channels have the *must Carry* designation.  Which puts a retransmitter in a poor negotiating position,  essentially the provider can charge whatever they want.

-----Original Message-----
From: NANOG [mailto:nanog-bounces at nanog.org] On Behalf Of Jean-Francois Mezei
Sent: Friday, November 17, 2017 3:28 PM
To: nanog at nanog.org
Subject: Re: Broadcast television in an IP world

On 2017-11-17 16:37, Luke Guillory wrote:
> Have you seen what the OTA guys charge for retrans rights? They don't 
> want to do this,

Fair point. Coming from Canada, OTA stations, because are freely available, can't charge distributors (BDUs (MVPDs in USA) so their revenues are purely from advertising.

So that changes the equation. If going OTT allows them to shut down their OTA transmitters (and not pay for conversion to ATSC3) it could result in lower operating costs.

In canada, BDU subsriptions are down and if the trend continues, NOT making programming available on the net means you miss the boat.

In the USA, perhaps OTA stations could go to subscription model pn Internet to replace the MVPDs revenues and end retrans disputes.?