Television’s 50 shades of pay

By Joe Sheller / Guest Editorial

British science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke had a daydream in the 1940s. What if artificial satellites were placed in orbit around the Earth and signals could be bounced off them to create a worldwide communication network?

More than 70 years later, Clarke’s dream is decades old, and many of our satellites are pushing 50. And yet, local TV has become harder to receive.

Today, if your television set receives its programming from DIRECTV, you aren’t getting a signal from the local ABC affiliate, KCRG. The Gazette Company, which owns both KCRG and The Gazette, and DIRECTV, a large multinational corporation currently trying to merge with AT&T, haven’t had a contract since the end of 2014. KCRG disappeared from Corridor screens powered by DIRECTV on Jan. 15.

If you’re a DIRECTV subscriber frustrated by the lack of local content, you are not alone. Battles between local TV stations and cable or satellite service providers have become a frequent feature of the media business as of late. Do you recall the KGAN-Mediacom Super Bowl fiascos of 2007 and 2008? While not an exact analogy – cable TV and satellite systems are both regulated by the FCC, but covered by differing rules – both the KGAN and KCRG cases are signs that we have moved into an era where such programming problems are seen more often.

When KCRG went on the air in 1953, going “on the air” meant literally that. Today, what we think of as TV is often not over-the-air broadcasting at all – our signal often comes to us via a satellite dish or a cable provider, or is something we view using the Internet. On its webpage explaining its dispute with DIRECTV, KCRG notes that it has agreements with some 50 content providers in the Corridor to allow them to carry KCRG’s signal. These days, running a small-market TV station means mastering many different contracts and delivery modes.

It should be noted that DIRECTV is no stranger to this kind of dispute with local TV stations. The company is either currently, or has recently, foregone local station TV signals in towns located in California, Texas, Louisiana, and in many stations owned by a TV chain based in Washington, D.C.

I don’t know who has the better case in the KCRG-DIRECTV fight. If KCRG has its way, DIRECTV will pay more, which is a cost that gets passed on to its customers. But, according to KCRG, the dispute is not merely about money, but also concerns the rights to KCRG content, which KCRG maintains is more of a sticking point.

It also seems to me that DIRECTV doesn’t suffer much anxiety over whether people in the Corridor can view local programming. In this battle, it’s easier for me to sympathize with David than Goliath – even if “David” happens to be a relatively big and powerful company in the Corridor.

This local drama is yet another example of how TV, and media as a whole, continues to evolve. The era of relatively cheap information funded by advertising was started by Benjamin Day in 1844 when he launched a daily newspaper in New York City called The Sun (tagline: “It shines for us all”).

The newspaper was sold at what was, even then, the ridiculously low price of one penny. Many newspapers began following Day’s example, and thus the media era known as the “penny press” was born.

That business model – provide content cheaply or for free in order to make more money on advertising – has been followed by almost all new media since then, including radio and TV, but today, there are signs that that model is breaking down. The breakdown has been partly caused, and definitely accelerated, by the ease of information access, including TV content via the Internet.

I am not sure that DIRECTV will damage KCRG in the long run, or vice versa. And it’s a bit odd to me that both corporations in this dispute make the same suggestion on their respective websites for frustrated local DIRECTV subscribers: Get an antenna.

Welcome back, 1950s. Today, Arthur C. Clarke, wherever he is in the great beyond, is dreaming of rabbit ears.

 

 

Joe Sheller is associate professor of communication and journalism with Mount Mercy University in Cedar Rapids. He can be reached at jsheller@mtmercy.edu.