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The Programming Disputes Thread

unclehonkey said:
Mediacom and Tegna in a posible dispute...Dec 31st per email I got

Dear (me),

At the end of each year, Mediacom routinely works to renew many of the agreements we have with the owners of the television channels we carry. Almost all of the negotiations take place behind the scenes, and customers are rarely aware that the negotiations are even happening.

In recent years, many cable and satellite companies have found it increasingly difficult to negotiate with the owners of local broadcast stations like ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, CW, and MyNetwork TV. The new "normal" in these negotiations has become the station owners trying to double their rates every few years. When a cable or satellite company refuses to agree to these huge increases, the station owners routinely resort to blacking out their stations.

Currently, our contract with TEGNA is set to expire on December 31, 2018, at 5 PM ET/ 4 PM CT. TEGNA is the owner of three of your local stations, listed below. While Mediacom strives to keep programming costs to a minimum, TEGNA is demanding to be paid over twice as much as the previous 3-year deal we reached with them.

Several years ago, Mediacom introduced a broadcast surcharge to bring more transparency to the rate increases being taken by companies like TEGNA. Every penny TEGNA squeezes from Mediacom gets passed through directly to you, our customers. We don't profit from these rate increases, we simply pass them on to our customers on a dollar-for-dollar basis.

While we are expecting to reach an agreement without any disruption in service, there remains a possibility that TEGNA could resort to a blackout of your channels. This is a negotiating tactic that TEGNA used in October 2015 and again in 2018 when it blacked out hundreds of thousands of Dish Network subscribers across the nation. These blackouts are generally short-lived, but we understand they can be very confusing and frustrating to TV viewers. In the meantime, we will continue doing everything in our power to keep these channels in your lineup at a fair price.

Thank you for being a Loyal Mediacom Customer.


For me its KARE NBC and 2 of its subs WxNation and Justice (Mediacom does not carry Quest)
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no distruption

Dear (me),

You may have received an email regarding information about our contract with the TV station owner TEGNA that was set to expire on December 31st. We are very pleased to announce that we have come to an agreement and there will be NO disruptions to your TEGNA TV channels.
 
Spectrum Cable is in a dispute with Tribune media and could lose access to their stations Jan 1. This is on KTLAs Los Angelas web site Hint Hint Rose Parade Lovers. This would knock of all Tribune owned stations nation wide.
 
Spectrum has already pulled the plug on WJW in Cleveland and WGN America. I'd been wanting us to switch to an IPTV service such as Sling TV, but in this particular case, that wouldn't work because Sling doesn't have WGN. Losing Fox 8 hits me on a bit more personal level because I actually have a couple of friends from college who are now reporters for that station. Chances are no one from Tribune is reading this, but if you had friends you hadn't seen in years, wouldn't you want to know what they're doing now?
 
Scott2013 said:
Spectrum has already pulled the plug on WJW in Cleveland and WGN America. I'd been wanting us to switch to an IPTV service such as Sling TV, but in this particular case, that wouldn't work because Sling doesn't have WGN. Losing Fox 8 hits me on a bit more personal level because I actually have a couple of friends from college who are now reporters for that station. Chances are no one from Tribune is reading this, but if you had friends you hadn't seen in years, wouldn't you want to know what they're doing now?
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The deadline was 5PM January 2nd, 2019. :)
 
Are you able to put up an antenna and get WJW that way? You're what, 25 miles from Cleveland? They are on VHF which may make it a bit challenging to get a perfect DTV picture however.
 
Don't have an antenna at the moment. The closest thing I have is a small, portable DTV set with an antenna, which is not the greatest. Living in a heavily-treed rural neighborhood doesn't help much in that regard either. Granted, antennas have probably improved since the digital transition in 2009, but still, that's all I have right now other than cable. It'll allow me to pick up the Akron-based stations like WDLI, WVPX, WEAO, WRLM and WBNX much better than the bigger stations in Cleveland. I live just outside of Medina, which is 32 miles from Cleveland and 24 miles from Akron.
 
Unless they've settled earlier today Tribune and Spectrum are still in a dispute. WREG CBS 3 in Memphis and WGN America are both off on Spectrum in Jackson, TN. This is sounding more like each side is blaming the other and neither one is doing anything to fix the problem. So to me they're BOTH equally guilty of causing the problem.
 
The thing to do is to start holding some of the cable companies to their advertised offers. Comcast has offers advertised. I put in my address to find plans available, and really good deals came up for my address. Upon calling they told me that they don't have any of those offers. When I told Comcast that I will see what Verizon is offering, Comcast violated antitrust laws by saying that Verizon and Comcast charge exactly the same as everybody else, and to trust them that Verizon doesn't have anything different than Comcast. They have done this for years.
 
anotherguy said:
Unless they've settled earlier today Tribune and Spectrum are still in a dispute. WREG CBS 3 in Memphis and WGN America are both off on Spectrum in Jackson, TN. This is sounding more like each side is blaming the other and neither one is doing anything to fix the problem. So to me they're BOTH equally guilty of causing the problem.
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I wonder if this will finally convince Spectrum to boot WGN America to a higher channel on my system (they've been on channel 12 for many years; IMHO, MyTV 12 (a LPTV) should be on cable 12 (it's on cable 11 currently) and then CW would move to cable 11 (it's currently cable 61 and has been since the WB 100+ days)
 
Spectrum now running scroll of why WGN America is not available

Atleast in my market.

"Tribune has removed their programing from this channel"..."tribune is demanding a ridiculous increase"..."tribune is seeking excessive fees for its broadcast station"..."as well as their WGN network which very few watch"..."driven by greed"...etc. etc.

I guess this has been in the making for a couple of days, but this is the first I have seen the scroll. I would assume this is Sprectrum-wide. Anybody else see this today on their WGN America channel?

I also understand KTLA in LA is not available on Spectrum, which has a heavy presence in Southern California.

https://ktla.com/
 
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It's been like this for a couple days. We lost KTLA, it's subchannels and WGN. The funny thing is I was watching KTLA today at work, which has DirecTV, and they were running ads to subscribe to Spectrum cable.
Although I'm sure those ads were agreed upon before this dispute.
 
I had to deal with a 4-month Fox blackout when the Northwest Broadcasting fiasco happened last year. Hopefully it won't be as bad on your end.
 
This is the first time that I can remember Charter/Spectrum letting a dispute go this far in my area. Usually they have settled before the deadline in the past. But like I've said in other posts I think that they've started to use Time Warner's tactics, which isn't a good thing. I honestly wouldn't care if we lost WGN America permanently, but I don't want to lose WREG in Memphis unless we could get WTVF in Nashville, but I doubt if that will happen.
 
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This is on WREG in Memphis and WGN America on Spectrum in Jackson, TN as well. This is sounding more like each side is blaming the other and neither one is doing anything to fix the problem. So to me they're BOTH equally guilty of causing the problem.

This is the first time that I can remember Charter/Spectrum letting a dispute go this far in my area. Usually they have settled before the deadline in the past. But like I've said in other posts I think that they've started to use Time Warner's tactics, which isn't a good thing. I honestly wouldn't care if we lost WGN America permanently, but I don't want to lose WREG in Memphis unless we could get WTVF in Nashville, but I doubt if that will happen.
 
Why should anybody sign a long term team with a company that is trying to sell itself. Wait for the new ownership to make a carriage deal.
 
Spectrum doesn't serve anyone in greater Hartford that I'm aware of. It's mostly Comcast or COX depending on municipality. Some also have Frontier.

As for Tribune, they own FOX and operate CW here.
 


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