In my area Time Warner Cable and Sinclair Broadcast Group are at odds over their contract for next year. Sinclair is threatening to pull the ABC affiliate from TW at midnight December 31 if a new contract cannot be agreed upon. It seems like I’ve heard this scenario before and it also seems like, despite all the campaigning and bad-mouthing from both sides, an agreement is always reached with no interruption in service.
But I’m wondering if this is always the case everywhere. Does anyone have cable television service that doesn’t include all four major broadcast networks as part of the basic package?
New York City’s cable system, Cablevision pulled the plug on the local Fox affiliate for much of October. Sinclair runs the local Fox station here San Antonio, we’re getting the same threats.
Typically the two sides come to an agreement before the deadline.
Belo tried a slightly different argument with its local cable providers. They argued that the 480p, non-hi def channel was the only one the cable system could carry, and anything else (the hi-def signal, the X.2 signal, whatever) would have to be negotiated.
Cablevision in New York also pulled ABC earlier this year and it blacked out part of the Academy Awards. When Cablevision pulled FOX from New York in October, viewers missed several games of the World Series.
I think Cablevision also pulled The Food Network for several weeks.
I worked in the industry for 18 years, so here’s how I’ve seen it play out.
There is a regulation by the FCC regarding broadcast networks called “must carry” which you can read about here.
As the article states, most broadcast networks choose to go down the retransmission consent route because it usually means more $$ for them. When this is the case, the cable providers have to pay the station owners to carry the channel… which means every few years you have contract negotiations. Which also means if a disagreement happens one side or the other might decide to play hardball, as we’ve seen happen with varying levels of success.
However, I know in some cases you have large apartment buildings that give a sort of free in house cable, and the choices available there can be quite odd and seemingly arbitrary. Then again, it’s free. You don’t like it, go pay for other service yourself.
If you’re wondering, those apartment buildings are not considered MSO’s and so are not under FCC regulation and can offer whatever they want and pull stations at will. A friend of mine lived in a building like this and she said it was wacky, you’d turn on the tv one day and stations would be gone, or new ones would appear with no apparent logic or warning.