Hearst Television contract up for renewal on Time Warner

[LoadStar]

Looks like we may be in for a game of brinkmanship between Time Warner Cable and Hearst Television, parent company of WISN-TV. Hearst's contract with Time Warner expires on June 30.

This evening, I noticed WISN is running a "scroller" during the evening news talking about the contract. The message there simply states "WISN TV's Parent Company, Hearst Television, is currently negotiating a renewal of its carriage agreement with Time Warner Cable. Please go to WISN-TV's website at //WWW.WISN.COM for further information."

If you go to the website, there is definitely talk about blacking out the station on Time Warner. Apparently, there is some dispute about how long retransmission rights run; Hearst says they expire on June 30, while they suggest Time Warner believes they run until July 25.

Time Warner's page, on the other hand, simply states that they are in negotiations.

[PONIES]

Well, I hope Time Warner gets rid of them. It is absolutely ridiculous that free OTA channels can charge cable companies fees for carriage. I receive WISN via an antenna anyways alongside my TWC. For some reason I get a lot of errors on WISN on TWC.

WISN-TV is nothing more than a useless middle man in between me and ABC anyways. An annoying middleman that likes to add their own bug next to the ABC logo (no other affiliates do this), and stupid weather warnings and temperature bugs from time to time.

If Time Warner is going to pay to carry anything it shouldn't be an affiliate. If only they could negotiate to carry the same ABC feed WISN gets direct from the Galaxy 16 satellite and cut out the middleman...

[jjallou]

Well, I hope Time Warner gets rid of them. It is absolutely ridiculous that free OTA channels can charge cable companies fees for carriage. I receive WISN via an antenna anyways alongside my TWC. For some reason I get a lot of errors on WISN on TWC.

WISN-TV is nothing more than a useless middle man in between me and ABC anyways. An annoying middleman that likes to add their own bug next to the ABC logo (no other affiliates do this), and stupid weather warnings and temperature bugs from time to time.

If Time Warner is going to pay to carry anything it shouldn't be an affiliate. If only they could negotiate to carry the same ABC feed WISN gets direct from the Galaxy 16 satellite and cut out the middleman...

Only the clueless wouldn't understand what is going on.........

Company "A" (Hearst) offers a product for free and owns the copyright for the product.

Company "B" (TWC) picks up the product that is offered for free and then re-sells it to it's customers for a fee. The fee they collect is called "profit" from the services Company "B" provides. Packaging & Delivery of TV signals (including free over the air signals)

Since Company "B" (TWC) doesn't "own" the product are they distributing for a profit (even though it's offered through the owners distribution method for free) they "can" be required to compensate Company "A'" for the right to re-sell Companies "A's" product.

PONIES - When you go into business and offer your product for free please contact me so I can take your product and re-sell it for a profit.........cause you think it's ok to do that. :bang:

[mrschimpf]

WISN-TV is nothing more than a useless middle man in between me and ABC anyways. An annoying middleman that likes to add their own bug next to the ABC logo (no other affiliates do this), and stupid weather warnings and temperature bugs from time to time.

This is a complaint, that they add a logo to otherwise what is one of the most unadulterated 1080i signals currently transmitted over American airwaves? Most of us just space out the BRHC logos of most channels unless they're spinning and have glaring colors because they're not important. If they want to brand their station, what's the problem? It's a very small cost to have one network affiliate not garbaged up by moldy music videos or radar on another stream.

Also, I'm on their side here; I got back two weeks ago from Louisville when visiting family, where Time Warner is currently taking over Insight and for what seems to be just TWC being bored, decided to instigate a fight over retransmission consent with that city's Fox affiliate and their sister MyNet operation. The Fox station offered TWC the same price Insight paid to keep them on the system, with the MyNet station being thrown in for free (most of the money for their RTC goes towards Fox affiliation fees, not the station themselves). But TWC told them no, refused to negotiate except over the phone, and threw both stations off the system for a week (under the usual excuse that the stations forced them to) while acting like petulant children, and had to come to a deal when customers started to make it known they'd flee to Dish and DTV (in that area, pay TV is a must because of the terrain; only the PBS station down the road in Elizabethtown comes in very well in the area I was in). The Fox station was clearly in the right because they would've come to a deal quickly in the Insight era, but negotiating with TWC in New York is like pulling teeth.

TWC is an ugly company when it comes to RTC negotiations. With Hearst it's even worse because there's always that small threat it can leach over to conflict with ESPN and the A&E Networks because of their small interest in both. Since they were spun off the main Time Warner they seem to never know how to negotiate in advance with stations anymore so we don't have to go down to the wire knowing if a station stays on the air.

[WITI6fan]

There is no "right" or "wrong" in regards to carriage agreement negotiations. It's too companies looking to profit from whatever they can.

These agreements are going to continue to be an issue until the government decides to regulate television distribution companies, which at this rate will be never.

If you want to live in a world without carriage agreements, move to Canada, where I understand cable companies are required to carry local broadcast stations, and they also must operate a "community channel" (similar to our public access channels) paid for by the profit from operating the system, instead of adding it as a charge to subscribers bills, then eliminating that charge and these station's funding and basically telling them to buzz off.

[PONIES]

PONIES - When you go into business and offer your product for free please contact me so I can take your product and re-sell it for a profit.........cause you think it's ok to do that. :bang:

If I ever go into a business where my product is designed to be given out for free to everyone by wireless signals buzzing about their heads and through their homes then by all means you are free to take it out of the air and do as you please with it.

Charging for the redistribution of unencrypted wireless communications is as bad as charging for air.

This is a complaint, that they add a logo to otherwise what is one of the most unadulterated 1080i signals currently transmitted over American airwaves? Most of us just space out the BRHC logos of most channels unless they're spinning and have glaring colors because they're not important. If they want to brand their station, what's the problem? It's a very small cost to have one network affiliate not garbaged up by moldy music videos or radar on another stream.

WISN's picture quality is pretty subpar for a full bitrate affiliate. They don't really look any better than the 12 Mbps 720p ABC affiliates across the country. Their extra logo cancels out any minute detail that is added by the extra bitrate.

For one - 720p doesn't have enough detail for it to be significantly improved upon past 10 Mbps, and secondly, WISN's encoders are pretty bad because I still see macroblocking during intense scenes. Having done identical screenshot comparisons between WISN and some other ABC affiliates there is no improvement to be seen on WISN.

[mrschimpf]

There is no "right" or "wrong" in regards to carriage agreement negotiations. It's too companies looking to profit from whatever they can.

I do agree with that, it's always a game of one-upsmanship when it does come down to these fights. But over the years where Charter here has never had to pull a channel, it seems silly that TWC always has to go down to the wire with every agreement (especially only a few months ago when it took Linsanity to get MSG back on TWC in NY after a month and a half).

These agreements are going to continue to be an issue until the government decides to regulate television distribution companies, which at this rate will be never.

Sadly so; we can't even agree to get television stations to put their public files fully online, which in 2012 is common sense (who is going to ever head to WISN or WTMJ to do public file reading in a 9-5 period except the most obsessive?), so this is a completely dead end.

If you want to live in a world without carriage agreements, move to Canada, where I understand cable companies are required to carry local broadcast stations, and they also must operate a "community channel" (similar to our public access channels) paid for by the profit from operating the system, instead of adding it as a charge to subscribers bills, then eliminating that charge and these station's funding and basically telling them to buzz off.

Even there, the stations are angling for money and want to collect RTC fees. A few have even pulled the 'we'll go off the air' card if they don't, which there is much more a realistic result because of full dependence on network scheduling.

[LoadStar]

I'm going to guess that Time Warner and Hearst have agreed to extend carriage while they continue to negotiate a renewal of their contract. As of 1:00 a.m. on July 1, Time Warner continues to carry WISN.

While WISN's page continues to read the same, Time Warner's "Conversations" page (their propaganda page regarding carriage disputes) now reads "We are currently in negotiations with Hearst Television, the parent company of several local broadcast TV stations across the country, and hope to reach an agreement with no disruption to our customers before our contract ends on July 9." Previously, I'm pretty certain that said July 1.

If that is the case, that's a good sign that the negotiations are at least ongoing, and that we hopefully won't see a blackout on Time Warner.

Edit: WMUR is the Hearst station that is in the largest market (DMA #7) that is also a Time Warner market. Their website features an updated time of 2 hours ago, and an updated blurb that also references the new July 9 date.

[LoadStar]

Ugh. It's looking like we may be headed for a blackout.

Hearst has now updated their pages, including WISN.COM, to state that negotiations are "at an impasse." Hearst extended carriage under the current contract through July 9 "to avoid inconveniencing Time Warner subscribers and disrupting viewing plans." However, they essentially state that negotiations are not going at this time.

Time Warner Cable still maintains that they are in negotiations and that they hope to have them resolved before July 9.

[Jack 1000]

Sup All?

TWC has not updated it's channel changes website for our division in some time.  They need to do that, so that people know that they can go to the site, and of potential negotiation issues with WSIN (Channel 12.)  At least I don't see it in the list:

http://www.timewarnercable.com/Midwest/support/policies/channelchange.html

Jack

[mrschimpf]

Bumping this up with midnight coming, and the Journal-Sentinel and WISN's ticker saying TWC and Hearst are at a 'deadlock' and a midnight (or near midnight) pulling is assured, claiming Hearst wants a 300% increase.

Again, how do we know these over-exaggerated figures are true? And why are cable providers never willing to give out the numbers for each station's RTC cents/per subscriber figure? For all we know, Hearst wants 4c/subscriber/per day, up from one cent per day.

[LoadStar]

Duane Dudek is reporting that there is a weird quirk about the Milwaukee market that ensures that WISN stays available on Time Warner here:

However, because of an existing agreement requiring Time Warner to provide Charter Communications with the WISN-TV signal, the cable channel will continue to carry the station until further notice.

So - Charter gets their WISN signal from Time Warner? That's a little weird.

ETA: I wonder if even Hearst knew about that quirk... and if so, why they bothered with the scrollers that talked about the station going dark on Time Warner at midnight tonight.

[mrschimpf]

(LoadStar got the news as I was typing, removing)

[mrschimpf]

Duane Dudek is reporting that there is a weird quirk about the Milwaukee market that ensures that WISN stays available on Time Warner here:


So - Charter gets their WISN signal from Time Warner? That's a little weird.

I know until 2000 in Sheboygan they grabbed the signal via antenna, but since they switched to digital they took down the giant receiver antenna at their offices and went with another solution. Their closest main office is in Fond du Lac, and since TWC gets the direct fiber from the Milwaukee stations, they take that for a quality signal likely under some deal where they won't campaign to take each other's systems. I never knew it did come from TWC until just now.

What amazes me is that nobody at TWC remembered they had to do this for Charter until near the zero hour. Does this mean there's this safety net with Charter if the next negotiations with Weigel are tough?

[LoadStar]

Well, looks like we get to keep WISN on Time Warner while everyone else in the Hearst chain gets to blackout on Time Warner.

It's not just Time Warner. I gather that this contract was a consortium deal with Time Warner, Insight Cable, and Bright House Cable, and all three are affected in various parts of the country.

Time Warner at one point owned part of Bright House, and they remain close partners. They not only share in the ownership of Road Runner internet, but also collectively negotiate quite a few carriage deals. I hadn't heard the same was true about Insight Cable, though.