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Honestly, I just don't understand any of it. What are retransmission fees? Who's paying them to whom? And what's wrong with receiving broadcast TV on antennas?

• dsr_ 14y ago
  In order to broadcast on a frequency in an area, you need an FCC license to do so. This is usually acquired by private sale approved by the FCC. Once you have that license, you can require the cable companies serving that area to redistribute your channel -- in which case you don't get paid. OR, you can forbid them from carrying your channel, or you can negotiate a deal. That deal is a retransmission fee, and is based on the assumption that having the channel is worth something to the cable company. If most of your content is from a national franchise (ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, whatever TBS turned into and Univision), your remaining content -- local news -- is the entirety of your value to the cable companies. The national content can be negotiated with the parent franchise, either by carrying a remote station or by carrying a national feed like Fox News. About 60% of US households have cable subscriptions. That's more than 60% of the population.