Kent said:
I've always heard neither ABC nor the people of St. Joseph are happy with KQ-2. I don't think the cable system in St. Joseph has particularly good relations with KQ-2 either, and keeping KMBC gives the cable company a little bit of leverage should Nexstar try to demand excessive compensation for carriage. I'm thinking part of the reason for dropping 'DAF off of cable in St. Joseph is because the News Press owns the new Fox affiliate there and had previously owned St. Joe Cablevision.
ABC as in Disney is fine with KQTV. Otherwise, it would end the network affiliation or expect some huge reverse compensation that KQTV couldn't afford (e.g. NBC and KRON). For Disney, it gives the ABC network additional exposure. In the old analog days, an additional VHF signal running ABC meant something.
Hearst, owner of KMBC, is ABC's top affiliate group, co-owner of ESPN and Lifetime, etc. Disney isn't going to screw Hearst/KMBC by making its agreement with KQTV beneficial to KQTV that it has exclusivity for its market.
The KC DMA has 939,740 TV HH while the St.Joseph DMA has 46,690 TV HH. So, St. Joseph has 5% of the KC+St.Joseph total. That 5% is the only loss to Hearst: that it doesn't collect retransmission rev from cable/sat on those homes, but it has to be must-carry. However, since KQTV doesn't have exclusivity in its agreement, it can't force cable to drop KMBC. The cable system might be able to voluntarily remove KMBC however, but it doesn't seem to be happening.
5% there isn't that significant there in the grand scheme of things.
If Hearst secured a tighter deal with ABC which included conversion of KSBW to ABC on primary, NBC on secondary signal, and more of its stations going with ABC, ABC would yield to Hearst in cases like this where KQTV would be dropped as an affiliate. However, Hearst likely wants to balance its portfolio of stations with both NBC and ABC should either tank. NBC hasn't committed a new affiliate in the Salisbury DMA market likely as a benefit to Hearst's WBAL which enjoys being the local NBC affiliate on cable and Fios.