NBC, WTHR, CBS - September Contract Negotiation

Does Indianapolis AT&T subscribers have to have the local NBC station (WTHR)? I would be perfectly happy with a generic NBC station if that is possible.  I have no allegiance to WTHR local news and wouldn't care if they didn't produce news locally here anymore.

I shouldn't have to go to all the hassle of new installations, contracts, etc just because Att isn't fulfilling their commitment to Uverse subscribers.
You changed service lately? Major pain

What about WRAL's commitment to AT&T?

What do you suggest AT&T do about it?  Here are some choices:
1.  Pay whatever WRAL wants, and add the added cost to the bills of everybody in Raleigh.

Let me guess: "I made a deal with AT&T to get these channels for a certain rate!  Raise everybody's rates - not just mine!"

2.  Pay whatever every station that U-Verse carries what they want, and raise everybody's rates accordingly.

"But why should I pay more for a station in Los Angeles that I can't get?"
3.  "Because we cannot provide the service at a cost we can afford, we are removing U-Verse in the Raleigh area, effective immediately.  Here is the phone number for DirecTV..."

Why, yes, I did leave one out:
4.  Pay whatever WRAL (and, once word gets out, every other local channel in Raleigh) wants, and do not raise rates.

I left it out because, given the choice between 3 and 4, I think 3 is far more likely.

You can record over the air channels if you set it up through a recording device like a  vcr or dvd recorder.

Just wait until the station comes to their senses and asked ATT for a reasonable amount of money for retransmission of their otherwise free signal.  Also search these forums for similar discussions (like this one).

When is uvers e going to get the local CBS station back?  It's to time to quit messing around.  It's been almost three weeks.  If you can't get the job done, maybe I should find a cable company that can provide the absolute minimum service.

Wrong forum

...or a dvr...in HD.  Dvr's can be bought for OTA recording these days.  Of course recording on vcr's has been around for about, well, since vcr's went on the market! 

Sure, we can all find alternatives to watching network prime time programming. We can get antennas, we can time shift with TIVOs or even use VCR's, but that's not really the point, is it?

WE HAVE UVERSE SO WE DON'T HAVE TO DO ANY OF THAT STUFF! 

It's ridiculous to have to buy a TIVO for one station. It's absurd to think that I'm going to break out my VCR from the 80's and record over my precious tapes of "The Greatest American Hero". What we have is a war between network affiliates and cable providers and increasingly, customers are being held hostage. The professor is right - you can't even change providers because next month, it'll be Spectrum and the month after that, it'll be DISH. Clearly, the system is broken and the reason the system is broken is because network affiliates have been granted, by law, a monopoly to serve a given geographic area and cable providers must, by law, negotiate with them for the right to retransmit the signal. Clearly, one or both laws need to be changed. We cannot have network affiliates holding customers hostage. The Must-Carry regulation writers could not have possibly seen the level of greed that is playing out before our very eyes. I'd bet that while my two Senators, Senator Portman and Senator Brown don't agree on much, they probably agree that in Ohio's capital city, we should be able to watch Ohio's two football teams this Sunday, The Big Bang Theory on Monday and yes, even the exciting debate tomorrow night for Columbus City Attorney which is exclusively on 10TV. 

Call Congress. There's a plan! 

Waste of time.  The various government organizations are in the pockets of special interests including the cable and wireless industries.  Even the FCC is no longer (or eventually) really protecting users under their new leader and his opinion of cable companies (interesting read).  Indeed they just sold off half of our public tv air waves to the wireless industry (at least that's how I look at it).

As for buying an antenna for only one channel.  Nonsense.  It's good for getting many channels that your cable company doesn't carry that may be of interest.  It's good for comparing a local with your cable reception to see if it's a cable problem or a station problem.  And of course, as mentioned many times before, it's good from insulating you from all this renegotiation stuff.

Professor, the antenna is useless to me because I'm not home in the evenings to watch CBS. That leaves me scrambling to find a digital recorder for the one channel that I care about but can't get. It's also not just one antenna, it's one antenna for every TV in the house and the digital recording device would only work on one TV. 

The right answer if AT&T is in this for the long haul is to take all the money they are saving by paying ZERO in rights fees now and buying every subscriber a subscription to CBS All-Access. It's not that farfetched. One cable provider bought antennas for their entire subscriber base. 

AT&T obviously feels that the combined power of U-Verse and DirectTV is enough to bring small network affiliates to their knees. The network affiliates were fine before cable when everyone got their product over-the-air. Advertisers don't care because they know Uverse subscribers fast-forward over the commercials anyway. In summary, neither side has any real reason to negotiate every reason to never back down. This can go on in perpetuity with customers locked into long term contracts. 

it's one antenna for every TV in the house and the digital recording device would only work on one TV.

I view that also as total nonsense or your a millennial who thinks they need to time shift every single receiving device they own.   I find it amazing how a whole generation has been brain washed by the cable companies into thinking the only way to get tv is through a cable system and ether are totally unaware of antennas or been told they are obsolete or inconvenient.

For more than 50 years households had antennas, and the majority didn't have nor required one for every room or tv in their house and generally didn't find the need to time shift every one of those tv's.  Did you ever hear of pre-amps, splitters, distribution amplifiers?  They don't work in all cases but can work in a lot of cases too.  I have an antenna (built my own) that can drive all three of my tvs. 

AT&T obviously feels that the combined power of U-Verse and DirectTV is enough to bring small network affiliates to their knees. The network affiliates were fine before cable when everyone got their product over-the-air. Advertisers don't care because they know Uverse subscribers fast-forward over the commercials anyway. In summary, neither side has any real reason to negotiate every reason to never back down. This can go on in perpetuity with customers locked into long term contracts. 

You may be a special case, or think you are, I don't know.  But ATT is not just thinking about you and your so-called "right" to watch particular stations.  They are thinking about all of us.  Why?  Because this goes on in every DMA in the country, over and over again, every year.  Where does it end?  If one negotiates some unreasonable retransmission fees and gets it, so will all the others.  Up and up it goes and we all end up paying the price.  You may not care about paying more to a cable company, but I do.  Frankly, at this point I hope ATT never backs down.

On the other hand, I do have some mixed emotions about these problems if only because of all these stupid "I'm leaving because I can't get my channel" threads.  It's becoming as bad as the old "where's my Hallmark channel" threads (which will probably start up again when their contract runs out in November).