There are some mighty unhappy DirecTV customers in Adams County, Wisconsin, and it’s not even DirecTV’s fault! The satellite provider is being forced to discontinue local programming from the Madison area in favor of local programming from the Wausau/Rhinelander area.
Who would do such a thing? Not surprisingly, it’s the feds. Sticking their noses in where they don’t belong as usual. Seems that Congress passed a law back in 2004 which mandated the local programming that satellite broadcasters could provide to all of the counties in the country and left it up to Nielsen Media Research to figure out which local channels each county should be allowed to receive.
For whatever reason, now is the time that DirecTV is being forced to act in Adams County and a lot of the residents do not agree with Nielsen’s conclusion. It appears that Adams County lies pretty close to being in between Madison and Wausau, but I don’t live in Wisconsin and don’t pretend to know what’s best for viewers in Adams County.
It’s not as if these subscribers are asking to receive local channels from Los Angeles or something, so why should they not be able to choose which market they want to receive local channels from? It appears that they are local to both market.
I presume the government, in their infinite wisdom, had the answer. I just don’t expect it to make much sense.
For more details, see WiscNews.
