GL: sat TV Feeds

[Gregory Han]

I looked up the law that gave RVs the right to have national feeds.
The requires the sat companies to give national feeds to RVs and the
problem for boats is simply that boats ARE NOT MENTIONED in the law.
It does not exclude boats but does not mention them as exclusions

When Sat came out, local stations worried that their local advertising
rates would suffer because new subscribers would not be getting them
but the NYC ads instead. Notice that ads come in two blocks. You see
one block for Toyota or Sony and then you see ads for the local Toyota
dealer etc.  Advertisers pay for eyeballs so they will not pay as much
if viewers get national feeds and do not see the ads for the local
Toyota dealer.

Nothing sinister is happening. Perhaps some day Boat US will get us
added to the law.

But signing up with a NYC address gives the same results and is
cheaper since sat companies charge for RV natinal feed priviledge.

Greg and Susan Han
Allegria -- Krogen Whaleback #16



On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 8:36 AM, Randy Pickelmann <rwp_48 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> There has been quite a bit of chatter in the past about getting DirecTV
> national feeds.  The long and short of it is that it is against FCC regs to
> broadcast the national feeds to boats...only long distance truckers and
> RV's...theirs is a better lobby than ours.  However, we still used DirecTV
> successfully while cruising for the past several years.
>
> We subscribe to the local programming for the Tampa Bay market, our home area.
> This costs an additional $5/mo. and has served us up and down the west coast
> of Florida, through the Keys and up the east coast as far as about St.
> Augustine.  When we went to the Chesapeake in '06 we contacted DirecTV as we
> changed locations and they changed our home area.  All we had to do was give
> them the address of the marina we were at.  In fact, when we got to Norfolk,
> we gave them the address of the marina in Solomon's we were going to be at for
> the summer.  This gave us the Washington DC local programming.  Summer of '07
> we went up the Hudson River and out the Erie Canal.  When we got to NJ we lost
> our DC programming so we called DirecTV and switched to the NYC local
> programming.  As we traveled south we never did run out of the NY local
> programming.  Turns out that the NY programming IS the national feed.  Your
> problem is solved.  Although we enjoyed the NY programming, we personally find
> that we prefer getting a more local view so we change programming as we move
> from one place to the next.
>
> There is a misconception floating around.  DirecTV does NOT care that you are
> on a boat.  In fact, we tell their Customer Service rep that we have moved our
> boat from A to B and need to change our service address, NOT our billing
> address.  They have been extremely helpful, never taking more than about 5
> minutes to make it happen.  We have heard of people hatching grand schemes,
> photocopying RV or motorhome registrations or taking a boat trailer
> registration and altering it to look like it is for an RV.  Why?  Tell em what
> you are up to and they will accommodate to the best of their ability.  After
> all, at the end of the day all DirecTV cares about is two things.  One, that
> they stay out of trouble with the FCC and two, that you pay your bill!
>
> Regards,
> Randy Pickelmann
> MORNING STAR
> lying in Clearwater, FL
> www.morningstar.talkspot.com
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