Quote Originally Posted by Woochifer
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Right now, cable companies pay for the right to carry local station broadcasts. That's what keeps these stations afloat. If cable went away, the stations would go bankrupt. It's that simple. If OTA signals went away, viewers would flock to cable or satellite providers

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That's interesting. Of course, you're talking State-side; here in Canada the CabSats don't pay for local stations. Up here the networks who provide local content want the CabSats to pay for local as they do for specialty channels. The CRTC regulator proposed that the Cabsats pay ~$10/mo. for local channels. The CabSats spent millions of dollars fighting this; they portrayed it as a "tax on consumers" rather that a charge to themselves. Of course it actually would behave like tax rather than a charge to the them since they would simply pass on the cost rather than absorb it, given there is no longer regulation or sufficient compedition to prevent that.

I pay $80/mo. for my satilite service that includes a very limited amount beyond the mandated minimum. It's a huge gouge and I am very seriously thing of cancelling the whole damned thing once I'm retired in a couple of months. I have no provision for OTA at the moment but might have to look into it.

BTW, the very same Canadian CabSats also are the main mobile 'phone providers and ISPs. Canadians pay more and get worse service for all these things than most developed countries. These corporate interest are extremely rich needless to say. Personally I'm extremely fed up and PO'd with the whole situation but of course there's effectively FA, (oh sorry, nothing personal, FA), that can done about it.

Given consolidation trends, American should stand by to be screwed over by corporate interests just as badly as Canadians already are. Long live capitalists and their ball-crushing grip on our politicians and regulators.