Rare Medium

Thanks to those of you who took action based on my previous post about DirecTV and The Dish Network’s failure to include local public television stations new, High Definition (HD) channels in their “local station packages” as they do for commercial TV networks, ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX.

When will the two satellite subscription services begin carrying PBS member stations HD signals? We don’t know. But, to illustrate the challenge, this post describes what DirecTV and the Dish Network had to say when I contacted them as a loyal public television viewer.

I talked or exchanged e-mails with both companies’ customer service teams. On July 6th, DirecTV replied to my inquiry with, “Thank you for writing to inquire about receiving PBS HD in your area. I’m sorry for any frustration this causes you, and I’m happy to respond to your e-mail.”

They continued, “While I do not have any information specifically about PBS in your area, we do value programming like this and realize PBS in HD is important to our customers. Unfortunately, due to limits in bandwidth, we are not able to offer all of the local channels we provide to the Salt Lake area in HD. I have entered a request for PBS HD to be offered in your area. Our programming department take channel requests like yours into account when deciding on new programming to offer.”

And they concluded, “As mentioned in our previous e-mail, we are launching new satellites to increase the number of HD channels that we are able to offer. It is possible that PBS HD may become available at that time; however, I wouldn’t want to speculate on any dates for this or our service provided by other companies.”

The Dish Network reply was more concise, “Thank you for your e-mail. At this time, we do not have specific information when the PBS stations will be launched in HD. We are currently working on offering more HD channels in the future. Please log-on to our website for more information about new programming and services being added to Dish Network.”

Increasingly, public television stations are the only stations in that are owned, governed, and operated within the communities they serve and not by far away profit making corporations.

Yes, many satellite subscribers can receive a digital / HD public television signal over-the-air if they install an indoor or outdoor antenna (if zoning permits it) and plug it into their satellite receiver box. Frankly, I would suggest everyone consider this option if they can receive over-the-air signals.

However, in a world of vastly more choices in television programming services — what were once called “channels” — there is a difference between what people can do to receive a signal and what they will do.

DirecTV and the Dish Network are now providing the commercial network stations’ HD signals as part of their “local channel packages.” Now it is time for them to do the same for local public television stations.