DirecTV to offer local pubTV HD streams
DirecTV, the country’s dominant satellite-to-home broadcaster, will soon carry the local HD signals of the largest public TV stations in the markets it serves.
After pubcasters officially approve the deal, DirecTV will add local streams from those stations to its growing slate of HD offerings. After the February 2009 flip-over to digital TV, the satcaster will extend carriage to HD streams from all the public TV stations in its markets, though not for channels that closely duplicate the content of others it carries. It will also offer two yet-to-be-determined national standard-def channels of public TV shows.
Unlike the cable systems it competes with, however, DirecTV won’t carry stations’ multicast streams, contrary to the hopes of public TV’s reps in Washington. The Association of Public Television Stations secured extensive multicast carriage deals with large cablers in 2005 and smaller systems last summer and aimed to forge similar deals with satellite systems.
APTS had previously failed to inspire the creation of a law forcing satcasters to carry all of public TV’s digital offerings, including HD and multicast streams.
The new HD carriage deal, signed in December, will instead work to broaden pubTV’s footprint among satellite offerings with video-on-demand services that will offer local and national shows, according to pubTV and the satellite industry. DirecTV doesn’t have the satellite capacity to carry multicast channels, says Stacy Fuller, v.p. for regulatory affairs.
“This is a forward-looking, innovative agreement for the digital age,” APTS President John Lawson said in a statement.
The pact represents the first digital-carriage deal public TV has struck with the satellite industry. Under the FCC’s must-carry rules for satellite TV services, DirecTV currently offers the analog streams of more than 140 pubTV stations as well as some national channels such as V-me.
DirecTV, which has nearly 17 million subscribers, now serves 70 markets that include more than 73 percent of U.S. TV households, according to company reps.
To activate the agreement, public TV stations must ratify it, which is expected to happen in the next few months, says Tania Panczyk-Collins, APTS spokeswoman.
Specific details about the carriage deal are still somewhat hazy. It’s unclear what the two SD channels will be, though they’re not likely to be exclusive DirecTV packages, Fuller says. As for the video-on-demand offerings, “we are working on a schedule and content now,” Panczyk-Collins says.
EchoStar—operator of the competing Dish Network, with more than 12 million subscribers—has in the past been more reluctant to cooperate with public TV. However, APTS has spoken with EchoStar about carriage and is “hopeful that we can begin negotiations with them,” Panczyk-Collins says.
Web page posted Jan. 21, 2008
Copyright 2008 by Current Publishing Committee