If it’s the end of the year, then it’s time for another cable carrier/content provider scuffle over retransmission fees. This time around, it’s Sinclair Broadcast Group complaining that Time Warner Cable is refusing to continue consent negotiations, and saying that, as a result, its 33 stations – the majority of which are the CW affiliates, with some Fox affiliates also included – will go dark for TWC viewers on January 1st 2011. According to Sinclair, TWC rejected their offer of an increase that averaged 10 cents per viewer but refused to provide a counter proposal. Sinclair EVP Barry Faber released a statement expressing rehearsed innocence and confusion:
We simply do not understand why Time Warner insists on being treated better than its competition, rather than accepting our equitable proposal to provide them equivalent or better pricing than is paid by their competition. It is particularly troubling that Time Warner Cable would deprive its subscribers of the extremely popular programming broadcast by our television stations when the monthly per station increase we are seeking amounts to just ten cents per subscriber, an increase made necessary by rapidly increasing programming costs at our stations.
TWC’s statement, of course, offers an entirely different picture:
Sinclair’s statement is false. Time Warner Cable has at no time told Sinclair that we were terminating negotiations. To the contrary, it is Sinclair who has repeatedly over the last three months declared discussions to be at an end and this is more of the same from Sinclair.
As is traditional, expect a last-minute negotiation to be worked out late on New Year’s Eve that both sides will paint as a victory for whatever point they’re looking to make at the time.
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