retrans wars

Utica Mayor David Roefaro says constituents call his office daily, upset and confused by the substitution of news out of Pennsylvania for their local news. He says that Time Warner’s franchise agreement with the city is up, and that renewal of the agreement is not a given. “Unless I can assure my residents that they will receive their local news and not Pennsylvania’s, I’m going to be in contact with other signal providers,” says the mayor.

Time Warner Cable announced Friday evening that it reached an extension with Sinclair Broadcasting “that will allow our customers to continue to receive all Sinclair Broadcasting stations uninterrupted through Jan. 14 and allow us to continue negotiating to reach a long-term agreement. We thank our customers for their patience and support throughout these negotiations.”

Time Warner Cable says it is continuing to negotiate a new retrans deal, but if talks are unsuccessful by the Dec. 31 deadline and Sinclair pulls its stations, the cable operator will offer programming from the Big 4 networks.

The group owner says talks have broken down after Time Warner Cable turned down a retrans fee of 10 cents per sub and didn’t make a counter offer. TWC says that’s not true and that it remains “open and willing to negotiate a reasonable agreement for our customers and have no intention of declaring negotiations to be at an end even in the event that Sinclair decides to pull their signals from Time Warner Cable on Dec. 31.”

With the fate of millions of Time Warner Cable’s TV subscribers in the balance, the Sinclair station group said TWC has nixed a proposal to settle the parties’ differences through binding arbitration. The two are negotiating how much TWC will pay Sinclair to carry stations covering the slew of TWC customers.

After its retrans talks with Smith Media collapsed last night, Time Warner Cable was forced to drop Smith’s NBC affiliate in Utica, N.Y., and its ABC and Fox affiliates in Burlington, Vt. But rather than go without those signals, TWC substituted affiliates of those same networks from other markets.

Dish Network said Thursday that Chambers Communications pulled its ABC affiliates in Bend, Eugene, Klamath Falls and Medford, Ore., from the satellite service at 12:01 a.m. on Dec. 16 after the two could not reach an agreement.

In a new twist in retranmission consent battles, Time Warner Cable has dropped Smith Media’s WKTV in Utica, N.Y., and replaced it with WBRE, another NBC affil 120 miles away.

Retransmission consent negotiations may never be the same. A deal struck last January between Time Warner Cable and News Corp. included a precedent-setting condition to allow TWC to carry Fox’s network programming if retransmission negotiations with Fox affiliates break down. Many TV execs likened Fox’s move to throwing its non-owned Fox affiliates under the bus.

Hearst Television Inc., parent company 29 TV stations around the country, is warning viewers that the station’s signal could go dark for DirecTV subscribers on Jan. 1. Hearst delivered an e-mail to local media outlets Saturday laying out the latest in a series of publicly contested transmission-rights battles.

Time Warner Cable is telling local subscribers in Buffalo, N.Y., that it will continue to carry Fox network programs into January and beyond, even if its deal with Sinclair’s WUTV, the local Fox affiliate, expires and the station is dropped from the local cable system.

News Corp. President Chase Carey will testify to Congress that government changes to the retransmission consent law “would clearly tip the balance of negotiations toward distributors. If broadcasters aren’t able to negotiate on a level playing field for a fair carriage rate then we would be relegated to second class status, and our future viability would be threatened.”

Cable companies and other advocates of retransmission reform cranked up the lobby machine Monday with a column from former Rep. Jack Fields, one of the sponsors of the 1992 law that established the current retransmission rules, and a lobbyist with the cable TV industry.

Retransmission talks between Sinclair Broadcast Group and Time Warner Cable have reached the point where it’s possible that Sinclair will shut down service for 33 stations it delivers in TWC and partner Bright House Networks franchise areas starting at the stroke of midnight New Year’s Eve.

Wall Street analysts Monday morning analyzed the weekend’s resolution of the Fox-Cablevision and Dish Network program fee showdowns, highlighting the entertainment giant’s leverage and guesstimating that the cable operator likely lost a few thousand subscribers in the worst case scenario.

The online service that streams local broadcast signals said its subscribers grew by 323% during the Fox blackout on Cablevision’s New York and Philadelphia systems.

A recent spate of TV blackouts and the lack of government intervention suggests that broadcasters have the upper hand over TV signal providers when it comes to negotiating fees, at least until Congress decides to act.

Fox and Cablevision reached an agreement Saturday that will restore programming to more than 3 million New York-area subscribers who have been without some of their favorite shows and baseball playoff games for two weeks.