Subscribers to DISH Network have been getting a freaky mail message the last couple days, warning "The City of Philadelphia might take your satellite TV service."
But say, it isn't so, said Darrell Clarke, the City Council member (Fifth District) pushing hardest for the satellite-TV minded Bill No. 100200 that's likely to come up for a full Council vote on Thursday.
Clarke is appalled, with good reason, at the slapdash way satellite TV installers have been tacking dishes for DISH Network and DirecTV services onto the fronts of rowhouses throughout the city.
"In some buildings split into apartments, you might see as many as six or seven dishes dangling off the front wall," he noted yesterday. "If the landlord is absentee, not living on the premises, there's no one with the power to complain, but it's become a very ugly situation. All those dishes" (usually gray plastic things, measuring 21-39 inches in diameter and bearing a Dish or DirecTV brand logo) "mess up the facades, clutter up the look of the block. I don't think it's a necessity."
There's also "a safety issue here," added the Council Whip, "the potential for a dish to fall off in a heavy storm and hurt somebody walking down the street."
Councilman Clarke isn't looking to rip existing dishes from their moorings, despite what that warning note to DISH customers suggested. His bill "grandfathers" all existing setups - just leaves 'em be.
But he thinks installers - often times independent contractors who get paid per "drop" (house call), rather than by the hour - should try harder, take the time to mount the dishes in less obtrusive places, starting with the rooftop.
In multi-family dwellings, the installers could also reduce clutter by mounting just one satellite dish and then splitting its signal among apartments, as is done in high rises. But then they'd need the parent company to give them so-called "multi-switch" devices, which would add a couple hundred dollars to a six- apartment install.
And what should happen in locations where there's absolutely nowhere else on the property to put the dish and still get a good signal? "The least the installers can do is use camouflaged dishes, which have been colored at the factory to blend in with the building facade," directs the writer of Bill No. 100200.
Want to do your part? It's possible (and technically acceptible) to paint currently installed dishes with a good quality, flat-finish (not glossy) outdoor paint, say in a "brick red" tone, to help make the fugliness go away. "But we aren't even asking for that, for now," Clarke said.
Bill 100200 does stipulate that when a satellite TV subscriber moves, the service provider should be required to come back and remove the abandoned dish. At present, satellite TV companies use the argument "that once installed, the dish is no longer their property," said Clarke, though customers are most definitely required to ship back leased set top boxes or pay huge penalty fees.
Having poured over the Federal Communications Commission regulations on over-the air antenna installation rights, Gizmo Guy can tell you that the law clearly sides with installers so long as they keep the dishes within the property lines of the user, and so long as there are no condominium/community development rules forbidding the installs. Even an apartment dweller can legally put a dish out on his/her balcony, for instance, so long as it doesn't hang over the railing, doesn't intrude into public airspace.
Arguably, then, any satellite dish that's hung off the front wall of a property, if it's dangling over a public sidewalk, is not an FCC-protected use. "The Streets Department could go there," said Clarke, just the way the city goes after merchants who illegally hang signs off their buildings without first getting a special zoning variance. "But that's a card we're holding in reserve."
So what do you think about satellite dishes mounted on the fronts of houses? Is it a plague upon our city? Or a great advertisement and our inalienable right to bring home the big games and movies?
Me thinks this city councilman works for Comcast, or atleast is in their pockets.— jerseyman- So he's worries about satellite dishes now? should he not concern himself with said property owners who don't pay their property taxes..don't keep there properties well maintained...and those that milk the city dry before he worries about a satellite dish? classic moron politician.— Shemp Howard
- I agree with jerseyman. A lot of people are very happy with satellite providers (especially since a lot of us are Comcast haters) so it wouldn't surprise me that there's some money crossing palms. Hey Comcast is trying to buy Obama, if they haven't already.— McCormick
- How about getting Comcast to negotiate in good faith with the satellite TV provides for the rights to Comcast sports Net so the Tonner and the rest of the people in the Philadelphia area can have REAL choice in selecting a cable provider? Can the Tonner get an Amen?— hunglikeaton
- Did you ever look up on some poles around the city and see some of the birds nests that comcast has left, why is no on saying anything about that mess.— JFM557
- satellite dishes are the ugliest things....there fine for chester or downtown norristown. the installers throw them up anyway they like and they just sh#t up the houses— gmh66
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