Wondering..

[Bibbler]

When looking at a list of stations that uplink to FTA, it dawned on me that these are generally not large city stations with large annual budgets, but rather smaller stations, sometimes even LP stations (ie. KDEV, WUJF, etc)...

Which made me wonder, how exactly do the smaller stations manage to pay tobe on FTA. I would think that is costs millions of dollars a year for a full time spot on satellite, yet I notice I see LP stations, RTN, and many PBS stations who you figure wouldn't have the budget to shoot their signal accross all of North America 24/7...

Anyone have a clue what they're paying a year.... Can't be cheap.

I have seen on the left bottom corner of the "lynsat network" and lower selectable options somewhere in there , there is mentions of $15 000pm and up depending on capacity they need etc. etc. etc. All greek to me .

Available capacity - LyngSat Space

I love PBS here in AZ comes from ASU university ??
Bunch of British programs + nova , actually they have one starting 8 feb / sat think about 8pm MST.

If only we can get Benny Hill once in a while

Amazing that PBS and others have better stuff too look at than the Package network stuff.

[boroda1]

I had an impression that these LP stations cannot go other way, but via satellite, to be received in very remote rural areas. Also, if you check an article in Wikipedia about RTN, it's RTN who provides a programming (very similar BTW) for all these local stations from the SAME UPLINK FACILITY.
Say, one station is OR, another in NY, but both receive same "Unreliable Sources" from AR.

Edit: sorry, it's not RTN, it's Equity Broadcasting, who is a provider, RTN is just a chennal name.
Quote:
"A trait unique to Equity Broadcasting is their usage of a centralized groupwide hub (called by Equity the Central Automated Satellite Hub, or C.A.S.H, system) where all production, programming, and master control is handled from a facility adjacent to the company's headquarters."
That's not very expensive for them, I think

[radiobob]

I wouldn't be surprised if some of these channels are "program return" feeds whereby the central master control folks can monitor off-air from their distant stations.

We had a local station here that had its master control in Florida and they had to feed an off-air signal via fiber optic cable all the way from Louisiana to Fla. so the master control operator could monitor that the station was on the air, technical quality was okay, etc. The fiber bill wasn't cheap either! (They've since reverted to local control).

In the case of something like a state PBS network that essentially feeds the same programming to transmitters scattered around a state, the options are: terrestrial microwave, fiber optics, other landline digital feeds, or satellite. It may well be more cost effective just to use the satellite.

[Iceberg]

Equity Broadcasting owns those stations or helps run them with the RTN programming. All of their programming comes from Little Rock and in a lot of cases, the only thing at the station location is the transmitter.

Some areas cable can't pick up the signal good enough OTA so they use the G10 feed. In some cases, its on G3 C-band.

Here in Minneapolis we have a Univsion (WUMN-LP) that Equity owns (they also own a Daystar station here too). They lease some space and have a transmitter and thats it.

The fact they can beam up a whole bunch of stations and have only one control hub, it saves money. Some of the programing is shown on alot of the stations.