|
Dayton
Business Journal
Time Warner, Sinclair
agree on TV deal
Monday, January 17, 2011
Two weeks after their broadcasting rights fee agreement expired, Time
Warner Cable and Sinclair Broadcast Group have agreed in principle to a
new contract.
Terms will be made public when a final agreement is put into place in
the next week. The tentative deal guaranteed none of Sinclair's
(NASDAQ:SBGI) television stations would leave Time Warner cable
networks at midnight Saturday. Executives at Time Warner (NYSE:TWC) and
their counterparts at Baltimore-based Sinclair negotiated the accord.
The channels that were in jeopardy included two Dayton stations,
WRGT-TV Fox 45 and WKEF-TV ABC 22; Cincinnati’s WSTR-TV Star 64; and
Columbus’ WTTE-TV Fox 28 and WSYX-TV ABC 6. The stations are among 33
carried by Time Warner and Florida-based Bright House Networks under a
three-year deal with Time Warner.
Time Warner has 2.3 million customers in Ohio. It has more than 600,000
customers in the Southwest Ohio region, which includes the Dayton area.
The deal ends a war of words between Sinclair and New York-based Time
Warner in the weeks leading up to the Dec. 31 expiration of the
contract. Sinclair was urging Time Warner customers to drop the cable
system and opt for alternatives. Time Warner, meanwhile, put blame on
Sinclair, claiming the company was putting TV viewers in the middle of
standard negotiations.
The contract that ended Dec. 31 was extended for two weeks and then for
an additional 24 hours Friday. The effort mirrored similar talks
between Sinclair and Time Warner that took place four years ago when an
extension was granted before an agreement was reached.
Dayton Business Journal
|
|
|
|
