Free local TV streaming provider Locast is expanding to Minneapolis as it continues to fight a legal challenge from the major broadcast networks.
Minneapolis channels were added to Locast on Tuesday, Aug. 11. According to its website, the service is offering all of the primary and subchannels from the city’s full-power stations as well as three low-power stations. However, three home shopping subchannels from ION’s KPXM are excluded.
Locast is a non-profit that retransmits local TV signals online within their assigned market. Unlike other online streaming services, Locast does not have permission to rebroadcast local stations and does not compensate them.
Locast refers to itself as a “digital translator” and, as previously reported here, contends that it does not need permission to stream TV signals under a provision in the 1976 Copyright Act allowing non-profit TV translator systems to relay stations without consent. The major networks’ federal lawsuit alleges that “Locast is nothing like the local booster services contemplated by Congress in creating this narrow exemption.”
Two of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, CBS and FOX, own stations in the Minneapolis market. The other major stations are owned by Hubbard Broadcasting (ABC) and Tegna (NBC).
DirecTV owner AT&T donated $500,000 to Locast last year and both DirecTV and DISH Network have integrated the service into some of their receivers, giving them an alternative way of offering network affiliates in the event of a retransmission consent dispute. DISH mentions Locast as an alternate option when users search for an affected ZIP code on its page dedicated to retransmission consent disputes.
Though the service is free, users have reported that streams are interrupted unless users donate $5 per month. Locast is in 21 other markets including Chicago, Sioux Falls, Sioux City, Rapid City, and Denver.
The geographically-large Minneapolis market stretches to parts of the Iowa and South Dakota borders and as far north as Red Lake, and also includes parts of western Wisconsin.