Outdoor Takes TW Fight Outside
By Linda Moss & R. Thomas Umstead -- Multichannel News, 3/20/2006 3:05:00 AM
The Outdoor Channel, faced with possibly being dropped or repositioned by Time Warner Cable in several markets, is fighting back with an aggressive ad campaign.
The feisty independent network kicked off a print-ad campaign this past weekend in Nebraska, Ohio, San Diego, North Carolina, South Carolina, New York and Texas. It’s a “call to arms” urging TOC’s fans to protest its getting dropped or shifted into a sports tier.
“We need to make sure the viewers understand the situation,” TOC CEO Andy Dale said.
TOC is spending “north of $200,000” on its print ads because it “needs to be proactive to let people know” that it could be dropped or moved down the dial by Time Warner, Dale said.
He also claimed that in at least one instance, a Time Warner representative had told subscribers that TOC “was not broadcasting anymore” in Nebraska, and that the network needs to counter such misinformation.
Time Warner is well aware that TOC hasn’t stopping broadcasting, hopes no customer-service agents have made such a misrepresentation and regrets if any of them have, according to Maureen Huff, the MSO’s director of corporate communications.
At deadline Friday, Time Warner was still saying it planned to drop TOC in Honolulu, San Diego, San Antonio and other markets and to switch it to sports tiers in systems in states including Ohio, New York, North Carolina and South Carolina, Dale said. The network was negotiating with Time Warner to try to stop both the deletions and the moves.
TOC also created a Web site (IWantMyOutdoorChannel.com) to tell viewers about Time Warner’s plans. The site lists all of the cities or towns where the network claims that Time Warner plans to delete it or move it to a sports tier, and it posts phone numbers for those systems.
For more on Time Warner Cable and its shifting of independent networks, please see the story by Linda Moss & R. Thomas Umstead on page eight of Monday’s issue of Multichannel News.
