February 07, 2013
Thursday AM

Regarding CBS Southeast: All of this has been going back and forth, back and forth, with both sides blaming the other I recently took the time, to call both parties, and have close to an hour long phone conversation with both Ed Cushing, and some random guy who called me back when the local CBS lady couldn't help me, and said he was the owner.

Both claim to be not in the wrong, CBS-SE says it is KPU's fault, and KPU says it is CBS-SE's fault, and for what its worth, every other channel lineup on KPU comes in just fine for me...

Are both sides innocent in any of this? I think not, Should Ed have called them out on Facebook.com? Probably not, was there better alternatives? Probably not.

The real issue I have here, is with CBS Southeast, They have the control to let us out of their feed that doesn't work with KPU, when you talk to them, they will say they are not, but it is all up to them, to better understand this, we must delve into what local T.V. is. A long long time ago, the FCC in order to help out smaller providers, came up with 2 options for a local station, they can do one of two things, Enter into negotiation with each T.V. provider, and come up with some sort of agreement, wherein the T.V. provider, pays the T.V. Station, in order to have there 'signal' For Example, KPU Most likely has to pay for the rights to Carry ESPN etc. The other option, and this is where it gets sticky is 'Must Carry' This is where a T.V. Station, feels like they can make more money off of advertising by having the largest possible viewer base, under the guise of 'free speech' FORCE themselves on every T.V. Provider in their area.

Basically, once every 3 years, CBS-SE decides what they have to offer our community, no one wants to have to pay extra for, and forces themselves on everyone.

Now when we talk to CBS-SE, they are going to tell us, there is no such thing as a waiver that they can offer, while there is no form that they can fill out, granting us the much higher quality feed from Washington state, what they could do, is give us an Open Letter telling KIRO (Washington) that they are unable to provide KPU with a viable Feed due to technical (financial) limitations and that they request that KIRO give KPU permission to use their feed, and grant a 'waiver' of their rights under the FCC 'Must Carry' clause that they have opted themselves into, guaranteeing them, the lower and recognizable Channel number, and give KPU permission to put the channel where they think it belongs (Channel 9999 that isn't listed in the guide but still exists) because KPU 'must carry' their signal, but it is up to CBS-SE whether they want KPU to enforce the numbering Scheme they do...

Why would CBS-SE want to write these much needed letter(s)? They don't, they want as many viewers as possible to be able to charge as much as possible to their advertisers, how do we fix this? (remember, we are their product, not their consumers). We avoid their advertisers, and we let their advertisers know.

Jason Mitchell
Ketchikan, AK

About: "Long time year round resident of Ketchikan, KPU Comm-vision Subscriber"

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