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From: lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein)
Newsgroups: net.dcom,net.video,net.ham-radio
Subject: Re: Satellite viewing "freedoms"
Message-ID: <779@vortex.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 4-Sep-85 22:49:53 EDT
Article-I.D.: vortex.779
Posted: Wed Sep  4 22:49:53 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 6-Sep-85 03:32:34 EDT
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Organization: Vortex Technology, Los Angeles
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Xref: watmath net.dcom:1252 net.video:1464 net.ham-radio:3169

Not to justify their actions, but at least some of the commercial-laden
services aren't all that happy about doing scrambling, but are having
their arms bent by others.  In particular, the sports suppliers are
upset about not having control over the markets in which things run
(they already demand that some cable companies black out some programs,
but they can't do that with TVRO people).  Also, the copyright holders
of most movies and old TV shows are starting to get very testy.  They're
demanding a cut from everyone watching those old programs.  What makes
satellite transmission of "The Munsters" different than watching it
on a local station?--the answer is easy: When a local station buys
a program like that, they pay a fee based on their market share.  If
you're in LA or NYC, it's a big fee, since they're the two biggest
markets in the country.  But if you run your operation out of a smaller
city... like Atlanta (WTBS) or WOR (Secauscus, NJ) you pay much
less than a station in LA that only sends to the Los Angeles Metro area.
Yet, these satellite superstations like WTBS, WOR, and WGN are sending
to the entire country, not just one city!  The program suppliers feel
that they're getting cheated by not being able to charge the kind
of fees that they would for conventional network airing.  

There are other complexities, but the end result is that there is
considerable pressure on many of the non-pay operations to 
collect some fees and send them back to the program suppliers and
copyright holders.

Some services will never scramble.  You should always be able
to watch TBN (blechh!), University Network (Dr. Gene Scott--
very interesting at times), C-SPAN, etc.  But so long as there
are copyright holders who want a piece of the pie, even the 
non-pay operations will be under pressure to scramble.

On the other hand, as I reported in another list recently, the HBO
scrambling experiments are having serious problems (MA/COM $400
decoders, DES audio encryption) and the industy is sitting back
to see how HBO comes out before they make initial moves in the
scrambling direction.

--Lauren--