I live halfway between Madison and Milwaukee. With Spectrum I had the networks from both. With an antenna both markets are picked up. The problem is with how my apartment is situated I can get only the Madison ABC affiliate.
I’m not paying a cable bill, plus $13.50 broadcast surcharge for free content. But I can’t watch any live stations through an app unless I have a subscription somewhere.
I guess this is a 2 question post. First, why does a cable company charge 12.50 for free broadcasts?
Second, if NBC, ABC,etc broadcasts the signal why won’t they allow free streaming? I can see maybe limits on local feeds, mainly for broadcast rights with the 4 main sports. But if you want to watch CSI or something what’s the issue?
I know I’m missing something in the logic. Just can’t see it.
The cable company charges you $12.50 because they can. As for not being able to stream your local stations, I would assume it has something to do with broadcast rights, and licenses. Just because a show is seen on ABC, doesn’t mean ABC had anything to do with its production. In fact, I’m pretty sure there is a law that limits the number of company produced shows that air on that same company’s network.
If you want to watch local stations for free, your best bet is an over the air antenna. Unfortunately, over the air broadcasts are not streamable.
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Most of the TV stations that carry the networks are not owned by the networks. They are what are called “affiliates.” The affiliates have business arrangements with the networks to carry their programming and get exclusive rights to carry the programming in a certain area. The affiliates make money by selling local commercials. If the networks were to bypass the affiliates and provide network content directly to consumers, that would undermine their business relationships and make the local commercial slots worthless.
Local affiliates can get their programming on a cable system two ways:
They can negotiate a deal with the cable system where the cable operator pays the affiliate to carry its programming. This is called “retransmission consent.” This is what the broadcast surcharge reimburses the cable operator for.
Alternatively, the affiliate can invoke the “must carry” rule. Under the must carry rule, the cable company must provide the programming of any local broadcast station at no charge to either the station or the cable company.
Basically the issue is that the networks are contractually bound to their affiliates and the networks do not think it is in their best interest (yet) to dump their affiliates. For the time being, they want to stay in the over-the-air business.
We’re slowly going through a paradigm shift though. More and more producers starting to market their wares directly to the consumer.
The next big this is going to be companies that bundle all the streamers and sell it to you at a “bargain” price.
The very short answer is it’s money, if you have it they want it. You paying for it is better for them then giving it for free. The free over the air system is sort of a legacy system which I’m sure they would like to see wither and die - but due to their viewer base and a perceived sense of civic responsibility in providing over the air broadcasts they just can’t pull the plug, but have no incentive to make free service any better. In many ways it’s gotten far worse with longer commercial breaks which is more easily skipped with a pay to play platform.
I think that actually harkens back to the original use of cable TV. Starting in the 1950s it was simply a way for multiple people (about the size of a neighborhood) to share a well-placed antenna. In hilly cities or communities too far away for individual roof-mounted antennas to reliably pick up a signal, one or a couple of antennas could be placed on towers with good line-of-sight and the signal amplified before being redistributed over wires.
Many apartment buildings used to have hookups in each unit to a common antenna on the roof, since as you’ve discovered, being on the wrong side of the building could mean many channels not coming through, even if you installed your own antenna out on the balcony. That’s a sort of mini-cable system.
So even though these early cable systems didn’t have unique channels or any sort of exclusive content, they still had a decent amount of infrastructure to maintain. Towers, antennas, signal boosters, wires, easements, etc. So I suspect that’s the rationale behind charging for the OTA channels, even if those charges are being captured in other parts of the bill nowadays.
I was curious, so I Googled and found that under 14-20% of Americans are only watching TV over-the-air. (Some are older people who are frugal or sticking to the old system, while others are younger and only have streaming services but not cable or satellite service.) So why couldn’t a local affiliate give up its broadcast license and just go cable/satellite/streaming instead? Because without the must-carry rule, the cable companies would charge a lot to carry the station. I wonder what the cost would be versus the cost of maintaining a broadcast operation.
It isn’t just Some are older people who are frugal or sticking to the old system, while others are younger and only have streaming services but not cable or satellite service. that use it. Many people live outside areas that have the option of cable, hence DirecTV and Dish systems. Their prices are not cheap and have issues with trees. I can’t even stream XM radio consistently on my phone where I live but I do get OTA TV just fine.
Cord cutters have found that there’s a decent selection of OTA channels to fill some of the gaps in programming that Netflix and other services can’t. An added bonus is that those OTA channels aren’t compressed to within an inch of their lives like most on cable and internet streaming services.
Edit: not, not “just commercials.” It’s being limited to a single time. Not being able to bing. Having to wait for a broadcast slot every week. I was a Tivo Series 1 early-adopter and early cord-cutter, and the thought of needing OTA without a Tivo or other OTA-compatible DVR is scary.
I can stream live TV in my market (Australia). They only stream their own content (news etc).
The government channels also stream content they’ve bought (and paid rights for), but the other networks mostly not.
I don’t think there’s much of an ‘affiliate’ structure in Aus.
(Also, I can stream FOX cable, which includes FTA channels in the default package, but I have to pay for FOX)