http://www.rbr.com/ ©2007 Spoonlabs d.o.o. Vivvo CMS 4.1 2012-02-11T17:31:20-06:00 http://www.rbr.com/tv-cable/11923.html 2008-12-18T09:26:00-06:00 2008-12-18T09:26:00-06:00 Jack Messmer The retransmission consent deal for all Fisher Communications stations expired and all had been removed as of yesterday from the Dish Network local-to-local service in its Northwestern and http://www.rbr.com/tv-cable/11923.html 2008-12-23T13:51:58-06:00 2008-12-23T13:51:58-06:00 Scott Thomas I've been digging into this dispute as deep as I can go and what I've discovered is startling. On Dish, we pay something like $5.99 for the Local package per month. It turns out that the monthly fee per viewer paid to the local stations you get for that is far less than the industry average of 35 cents per channel (see http://www.kimatv.com/about/36311114.html for the chart of monthly fees). Usually all local channel viewership surpasses that of all the top 40 national ones in that list. (Think about it, you tune in to your local news, talk shows, soaps, or game shows and so on far more frequently than all the others - most people do.) So, if you only get maybe a few stations for that $5.99, and they only pay a few cents for you to watch then, then I think we just found the Dish "Cash Cow"!In my area signal quality from the free broadcast is not acceptable. I have no reasonable means of obtaining the free broadcast, and I'm sure many people are in the same situation. In my area, the vast number of people are on Dish because it's rates have been cheaper than DirectTV. And, there are almost no houses with free broadcast antennas visible, due to the weakness of the local signals.I have written both to Dish, and called them, and they offered me a $5 per month refund for not providing me my local major station. That's a pittance for what I'm missing, honestly. Dish also eventually responded to my email with a boilerplate email. I also have had success emailing with my local Fisher owned station - they're inundated with email but they did write back as well, and not a boilerplate, but a personal letter.Honestly, a few cents additional on my bill each month for each local channel isn't going to make a dent in my pocketbook. Dish, get with the program settle for the reasonable fee Fisher is asking for!In the meantime, if no agreement is reached in a timely manner, I do plan to drop my contract with Dish (due to their breach of contract for not carrying a major local channel) and get set up with DirectTV.(My source for the amount of the monthly fee is Larry Roberts, Regional VP of Fisher Communications, citing the Fisher lawyers, who said he could say, "The fee we’re asking from DISH is only a fraction of what DISH pays for these other less popular services that have considerably fewer viewers.")