Prepare for another round of affiliate owner/cable network squabbles, as
LIN TV has announced negotiations with
Charter Communications "appear unlikely" to result in a retrans agreement, and that cable customers in Grand Rapids, Green Bay, Hartford-New Haven, Springfield (Mass), Dayton, Providence and Toledo can expect affected stations to be pulled from the lineup when the current agreement expires June 30. Of course LIN TV is taking the opportunity to educate customers about DISH Network where the stations are available courtesy of their recent agreement. Check after the break for a list of potentially affected stations while we hope for an 11th hour reprieve, although with the two sides at odds over what "fair market value" of digital signal is, we're not confident this will turn out any better than the
4 month break Suddenlink customers experienced earlier this year. (Warning: PDF read link.)
- Green Bay: WLUK-TV (Fox)
- Grand Rapids: WOOD-TV (NBC), WOTV-TV (ABC), WXSP-TV (MNT)
- Hartford-New Haven: WTNH-TV (ABC), WCTX-TV (MNT)
- Springfield (Mass): WWLP-TV (NBC)
- Dayton: WDTN-TV (NBC)
- Providence: WPRI-TV (CBS), WNAC-TV (Fox)
- Toldeo: WUPW-TV (Fox)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Dayton Guy @ Jun 4th 2008 10:40PM
I'm a little upset over LIN so this is just MHO...
Ugh. If only LIN knew how much I totally dislike them! They have been pulling the same crap with Time Warner Cable for access to WDTN in High Definition for years... Well, we know at least one reason why they have only been #2 in Dayton forever. I'd love to HD-DVR a lot of NBC programs but since I have to watch them in SD, I don't bother watching much of anything on NBC.
At least WHIO (CBS) has local HD news here. :-)
Hey LIN, you are doing such a great job trying to make your product sound like top shelf (when it is clearly not) and since you are making it sound like a "penny per day" is peanuts to a place of business, why not charge local advertisers more to make up that "less than a penny per subscriber" instead of in the end charging your viewers more to watch your stations?
I can not wait for LIN to sell WDTN to any other company that will not be so dumb when it comes to this... They just make themselves look bad even if they make the cable co. look bad as well.
Here is what WDTN's President & General Manager says about it... It sounds like it was prewritten and just fill in "WDTN" where it would say "place station call letters here"
http://www.wdtn.com/Global/story.asp?S=8383838
Nate @ Jun 5th 2008 2:19AM
Thank goodness I live in a two-station market which has the Fox-owned station from Milwaukee (in HD, too!) along with WLUK (which will not offer their -DT to anyone but DishNet customers; oh did they have fun having to explain to Packers fans why they couldn't watch the games on cable in HD). This jerkiness when it comes to cable customers goes back to when Emmis WLUK so I'm not surprised. Their news is often horrible beyond Packers news, and their syndicated product beyond Judge Judy, WoF and Jeopardy! is horrible.
At least I might get a free antenna out of Charter from this though like Medicom did during the Sinclair debacle.