Time Warner Cable, San Antonio Station Make a Deal
Post-Newsweek ABC Affiliate Will Stay On Air
By Multi Channel News Staff -- Multichannel News, 10/14/2008 8:09:00 AM MT
KSAT 12, a Post-Newsweek TV station in San Antonio, and Time Warner Cable have reached a retransmission consent agreement that will keep the ABC affiliate on the air, avoiding a prolonged standoff that forced 15 LIN TV stations on the East Coast and Midwest to go dark.
"You will continue to see KSAT 12 and LATV in South Texas on all of Time Warner Cable," KSAT 12 vice president and general manager Jim Joslyn said on the station’s Web site Monday. "We welcome this agreement, and we're pleased that our viewers continue to come first."
In a prepared statement, Time Warner Cable said it was "pleased to have an agreement in principle in place with KSAT that allows us to provide our customers with uninterrupted delivery of their favorite ABC and LATV programs. We thank our customers for their loyal support.
Their retransmission-consent extension was set to expire at midnight Oct. 15. KSAT-TV had been warning Time Warner subscribers, through screen crawls and its Web site, that the station could be dropped in that market.
On Oct. 3, when its deal expired, LIN TV pulled its stations off Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks systems in Austin, Texas; Buffalo, N.Y.; Columbus, Ohio; Dayton, Ohio; Fort Wayne, Ind.; Green Bay, Wis.; Indianapolis; Mobile, Ala.; Springfield, Mass.; Terre Haute, Ind.; and Toledo, Ohio.
Time Warner said 1.5 million of its subscribers are affected, while 106,000 Bright House customers are impacted in Indianapolis.
LIN TV is seeking a 30-cent license fee for its stations. Time Warner Cable says it doesn't want to pay for broadcast signals that are available for free over the air.
