I'm not quite sure when this stopped but up until the late 2000s, if you lived in an area where DirecTV didn't carry your local stations, you got the NYC ABC, CBS, FOX, and NBC affiliates. I probably know more about New York's local networks than I do my own.
Long story actually. Predates DirecTV/DISH Network, back to the days of the "BUD" (Big Ugly Dish).
BUDs were a godsend for rural people, particularly in the mountains, who previously could not get TV at all, or were at the mercy of cable bandits who charged outrageous $$ for poor service. At first, nothing was scrambled at all, including the "backhaul" from network HQ to the local stations. Then enough people got in on it that it cut into profits and Congress acted and made them sell the broadcast networks to viewers in "rural areas". There were several outfits that provided these, including the "Denver Five" which gave the MT Denver stations, and PT24, which had a random mix of stations that changed from time to time (I suppose the idea was that you could find something sort of local news among them, as one statiion was iin the south, one in the north, one in the midwest and so on).
But all they did was read you this statement that said "I can't get TV OTA" and you said yes and you got it. No actual test, you could live anywhere and get this.
By this time the BUDs were replaced by the new DBS (DirecTV/DISH) systems, and they just did the same thing. Lots of people preferred to get the out of town stations for various reasons.
Eventually this reached a critical mass and the local stations sued and got an injunction against ANYBODY, including people who really needed the service, which sucked, and Congress acted again. They made the dish providers start actually testing if you could get a signal so rural people could still get the networks. And freed up a lot more bandwidth so the sat companies could start providing local stations. This is when they changed from the random mix of stations to NY/LA. They also "grandfathered" anybody who had the service at the time.
The NY/LA stations are still on the systems and there are still grandfathered customers and people in the few markets they do not have locals in (and quite a few more customers that are missing one network or another in a place without all the networks).
A weird remnant of the PT24 package is that it is still on the BUD system for hotels and ex-pats in the Caribbean and Mexico, including WSEE in, of all places, Erie, PA. If you stay at a hotel down there catering to tourists, you are likely to see that station, complete with local news of the goings on in Erie. They do replace the local commercials, and replace the weather with (same weathermen) a Caribbean weather report. The station even runs a website that is the main weather channel like deal for that region in English.
