By Arthur E. Foulkes
TERRE HAUTE — A judge’s decision in a Florida lawsuit left Pat Pearce of rural southern Vigo County unable to watch some of her favorite ABC TV programs for over a month, including “Grey’s Anatomy,” one of her favorite shows.
“I’m just in a hole,” Pearce said at the time. She spent over a month trying to find a way to receive ABC programming again. Her rural neighborhood had no access to cable TV and, because Terre Haute has no ABC television affiliate, a roof antenna was no help.
“I’m ready to move from Terre Haute,” she joked back in December.
Today, Pearce and her husband have ABC programming again. It’s provided by All American Direct, a satellite TV provider whose parent company is based in Indianapolis. Using her existing DISH Network equipment, All American Direct hooked up the Pearces to ABC out of Atlanta without even coming to her home.
“It took them a total of 20 minutes” to hook up ABC, Pearce said. “It was just too simple the way they did it all after that aggravation.”
Pearce’s “aggravation” started after a U.S. district judge in Florida ruled that satellite TV provider DISH Network had broken the law in providing “distant network programming” to many of its customers. “Distant network programming” refers to giving ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox programming to a viewer from a network affiliate in an outside media market.
Before the judge’s ruling, DISH Network was providing the Pearces with ABC out of Atlanta — something the law actually allowed since Terre Haute has no ABC affiliate.
However, the federal judge in the case, Judge William Dimitrouleas, decided it was not enough that DISH Network stop providing distant network channels to the customers who would not qualify for them under the law; he ruled the company must shut off distant network programming to all of its customers — even though DISH maintains that the vast majority of those customers, such as the Pearces, would qualify for distant network signals under the law as it was written.
“We had to shut off all of our 900,000 customers who take distant network channels,” said DISH Network spokeswoman Kathie Gonzalez. “We’re just as upset about it as our customers are.”
EchoStar Communications Corp., the parent company to DISH Network, “disregarded the limitations of its statutory license and sought to avoid its obligations under the [law] at every turn,” Judge Dimitrouleas said in his ruling, which was handed down last year.
“There were some areas that were kind of vague in the law,” Gonzalez said. “The [network affiliate broadcasters] … felt that the law should be interpreted very narrowly” and the judge basically agreed, she said.
The Pearces now receive their ABC programming using their existing DISH Network satellite equipment. They can do this through EchoStar, a subsidiary of National Programming Service, an Indianapolis-based company. EchoStar contracted with All American Direct to lease satellite space from EchoStar to enable the company to provide distant network channels.
All American Direct is “a completely separate company” from EchoStar, Gonzalez said; however, All American Direct’s Web site identifies the company as “one of the top five leading DISH Network retailers in the country.” Also, DISH Network advised its customers who were about to lose their distant network channels, such as the Pearces that, if they wanted to stay with DISH Network, they should contact All American Direct.
So, in a way, the Pearces still receive their distant network broadcasts from EchoStar, only they are going through a third-party using EchoStar equipment. This upsets the broadcasters who took EchoStar to court in the first place.
“EchoStar is engaging in a transparent sham,” states a cease and desist order filed in Judge Dimitrouleas’ court by lawyers for affiliates of NBC, ABC, CBS and Fox. The order claims that EchoStar and National Programming Service are working together to “defy” the court order that EchoStar stop providing distant network programming. If the network affiliate groups have their way, the Pearces may be without “Grey’s Anatomy” and other ABC programming again soon.
“We’re still working with Congress to get a solution,” Gonzalez said of EchoStar’s lobbying efforts designed to change the law to allow more liberal access to distant network programming.
Many members of Congress, including Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., and Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Verm., and others with rural constituents, have taken an interest in the issue.
“I am disappointed that Congress was not able to resolve this issue before adjourning [in December],” Clinton said in a media statement. “I am hopeful that under new leadership next year we can take action to provide relief to the affected households as soon as possible.”
Congress is involved in the matter because the government protects local broadcasters’ “market areas” from outside competition, something at least one member of Congress, Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) says is essential to enable “local broadcasters … to create the local news and other programming that communities count on.”
It’s not clear how much all this is hurting DISH Network’s bottom line or its customer base. A perusal off Web blogs dealing with the issue reflect a lot of viewer anger, but often that anger seems directed at Judge Dimitrouleas and the network affiliates and not at DISH Network.
Meanwhile, DISH’s main competitor, DirecTV, was offering special deals to DISH customers in December if they would make the switch to DirecTV, even launching a Web site specifically for that purpose, www.directv.com/switchfromdish. Locally, however, DirecTV does not presently offer local channels, something a company spokesman said it will, eventually.
“The [court ruling] won’t hurt DISH too much,” said Basil Anas, a financial analyst and investment adviser with Commonwealth Securities in Carmel. DISH Network “is a fast-growing company” whose growth may be strong enough to absorb some marginal customer losses, he said. The company’s stock is presently trading at a 12-month high.
So, at least for now, the Pearces and other local rural satellite TV viewers who used DISH Network can still receive local network affiliates and view an ABC affiliate from Atlanta without making any major changes.
And while the monthly price of her distant network service went up from $1 to $2, Pearce is not overly discouraged.
“I’ve got my ABC. I’m happy,” she said.
Arthur Foulkes can be contacted at (812) 231-4232 or arthur.foulkes@tribstar.com.
