On 24 Jul 2008, Melinda Iley-Dohn wrote: <snip> >I don't like the idea of a national Foundation dictating to us what we >can or can not play. <snip> That's a straw man argument, since nothing of the sort is proposed. The way that U.S. broadcasting networks have typically worked is that local affiliate stations surrender a specific negotiated portion of their daily and/or nightly schdules to national network programming and retain full local control of the remainder of their schedules. Additional agreement clauses arrange local and national sharing of spot advertising time and revenue with various program promotional commitments (national spots during local time and local spots during network time, etc.). When the network news department offers special programming during local broadcast times that would require local program pre-emptions for carry, it's an additional free service that the local station can opt out of, but station's that opt out must then deal with the flak from local listeners or viewers who want the national programming and aren't getting it (just as they must deal with listeners or viewers who would prefer their regular programming to the network's special coverage). Pacifica stations were offered impeachment hearing coverage and all chose to carry. Any station who stupidly declined would be exposed as embarrassingly off Mission. A policy that allowed the National Program Coordinator to mandate local station pre-emptions was obviously not necessary in this instance, but a policy that allowed the National Program Coordinator to guarantee full must-carry network coverage during certain hours negotiated by prior agreement with the local stations would obviously be useful in establishing a coherent network identity for Pacifica. If the Pacifica Network knew that it had confirmed priority access to the 8pm to 9pm weeknight timeslot on every Pacifica station, for example, then it could produce or obtain and properly promote a special program for network airing at that time on any day that had sufficient news activity to justify the special program. If you don't like 8pm to 9pm, make it 11:30 pm and think Nightline. --Terry Goodman