Page 91 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

0 | Cable Carr age D sputes

liFetiMe
Carriage disputes have also erupted between national program networks and cable/satellite
operators. One example of this occurred in January 2006 when the satellite company Echo-
Star dropped the women’s-oriented Lifetime network and Lifetime Movie Network from its
service over a contract dispute, replacing them with a rival women’s-oriented channel, Oxy-
gen. Because Lifetime was partially owned by Disney, which also owned ABC, The Disney
Channel, and ESPN networks, they had bargaining leverage over carriage rates. However, as
the top-rated network among women viewers and an advocate for women’s issues, Lifetime
relied less on this corporate leverage than the public protests from their viewers.
Over 50 women’s organizations, including the National Network to End Domestic Vio-
lence, the National Organization of Women, the YWCA, and the Breast Cancer Research
Foundation, organized nationwide letter-writing campaigns and rallies to protest EchoStar
and encourage subscribers to switch to a competing satellite service that carried the net-
works. A month later, EchoStar and Lifetime agreed on a contract, but the competing satel-
lite company DirecTV sued Lifetime for failing to comply with a promise to pay $200 for each
viewer who switched from EchoStar to DirecTV during the dispute.

commercial programs, and rosy forecasts for altogether different audiovisual cul-
tures through broadband. The history of these disputes will continue to influence
future debates over audiovisual policies.

ProTECTing LoCaL BroaDCasTErs
Cable and broadcaster disputes began in the early years of television’s expan-
sion in the 1950s. Local cable systems consisting of hilltop microwave towers
and cables strewn to homes emerged in the sparsely populated western states
and hilly areas around the country where communities had poor or no broadcast
reception. Broadcasters complained that this pirated their signals without pay-
ing for them and grew increasingly concerned as cable systems began importing
signals from network-affiliated stations in distant cities, sometimes duplicating
the programs on local stations. Evident at a series of FCC and congressional hear-
ings on the matter were conflicting cultural values over the development of this
new mass medium. The FCC’s frequency allocation plan prioritized the devel-
opment of local stations in every community despite the difficulty that sparsely
populated areas might have in funding stations through advertising revenues. In
1962, under the newly appointed FCC Chair Newton Minow, who labeled net-
work programming a “vast wasteland,” the FCC required a Riverton, Wyoming
cable operator to carry all local stations and prohibited it from importing dis-
tant signals that duplicated programs on local stations. The FCC extended these
rules to all cable operators in 1965. But many residents in areas outside the sig-
nal reach of three-station markets (over 90 percent of households at this time)
wanted access to more national network programming and the “local” televi-
sion culture from distant cities—in some cases, communities created nonprofit