Living in No-Man's Land

I live in Northeast Arkansas, 5 miles south of the Missouri state line, 9 miles inland from the Mississippi River, 70 miles north of Memphis, Tennessee. Our town is rather small, 15,000 people, maybe. We don't have a TV station here. The closest ones are in Memphis (70 miles away) or Jonesboro, Arkansas (50 miles west).

We have DirectTV for our provider and our local stations are the stations from Memphis. We get them all so there is a variety. However, we get mostly Tennessee or Mississippi news and weather. The only Arkansas news we get is if something happens in West Memphis which, as the name implies, is directly across the river from Memphis.

I asked DirectTV if we could get the local Jonesboro station so that we could get local news and weather. The reply I got was that the Nielson company decided the viewing areas. Nielson apparently can't be contacted unless I'm a business that would like to use their service for marketing. I also remember many years ago the Jonesboro station saying that our area was considered the Memphis area.

But, the local cable company, Ritter Communications, does carry the Jonesboro station, IN ADDITION to the Memphis stations. So, if the cable company can offer the Jonesboro station, why can't the satellite company?

It's gotten so the Memphis stations barely cover north of Memphis for weather. There was 1 weatherman who stated during a tornadic event that the Jonesboro station would take care of the "most northern parts of the viewing area". Yeah, right, only if you have cable and not satellite. And since we live in a basically rural area, there are more satellite viewers than cable.

So, we are in No-Man's Land. The Memphis stations don't seem to want to cover our area, nor does Jonesboro, unless we use certain providers. Maybe I'll just move to a cave where there is no coverage at all and just stick my head out to check the weather, won't vote because I won't know who the candidates are, and won't have to see another murder taking place in Memphis.

OK, rant over. If anyone knows how this can be changed, aside from switching to cable, let me know.