| No more Heroes. No more Office. Less football. No more Chuck. No more Today Show. No more Leno or Conan. No more KXAN on Time Warner if an agreement is made by midnight Thursday night.
According to Austin360.com, "KXAN's corporate owner, and Time Warner are haggling over the station's retransmission contract, which expires at midnight Thursday. If an agreement is not reached - and both sides seem deeply entrenched in their opposing views - Cable Channel 4 will go dark, with a message from Time Warner that KXAN is not available."
The hiccup in negotiations is that Time Warner wants KXAN's products for free. KXAN wants Time Warner to pay less than a penny a day to pay for retransmission.
Austin360 says that KXAN's signal goes to 311,000 or so people in Austin. That means Time Warner is haggling over $1.14 million. Money ($3.65 per person per year) Time Warner says it would be forced to pass on any additional cost to its subscribers.
KSAT, a San Antonio station affiliated with ABC, is in a similar situation with Time Warner.
Eric Lassberg, General Manager of KXAN answered some questions over at the Austinist about this issue.
Our dispute is about fair and equitable treatment. Time Warner charges its cable subscribers a fee to provide KXAN-TV in its channel line-up. It also charges its cable subscribers a fee to provide cable networks, which cable subscribers may or may not watch. Time Warner shares that fee with the cable networks; however, it does not share that fee with us. In essence, it takes our signal for free and resells it for a profit.
He went further in an Austin360.com interview.
"Here's our frustration: Smaller cable operators and satellite companies are paying fair compensation for our signal. To pay us nothing is to say we bring nothing to the table, and we know that's not true," Lassberg said.
This isn't the first time this has happened either. Williamson County lost KXAN from January until March until Suddenlink picked up the signal from Temple.
This is the sort of corporate squabbling that is irritating. The reality of it is simple. This is just a nuisance. There are other options out there for the NBC die hards-- DirecTV satellite, Dish Network, AT&T U-verse, Suddenlink cable (where available), NBC.com, Hulu.com, and rabbit ears.
Time Warner will lose customers over this and allow some of their competitors to cut into their overwhelming Austin stranglehold.
On the other hand, Lassberg estimated about 50% of KXAN's viewers are Time Warner subscribers. If they lose half of their audience KXAN will be required to lower ad rates just to stay competitive.
The only way we will know for sure if an agreement has been made is by tuning in Thursday at midnight. |
