A dispute over programming charges has prompted Hearst Corp.-owned television stations in Maine, New Hampshire and Boston to black out their signals to Time Warner Cable, according to the cable provider.
In Maine, that means Portland-based WMTW Channel 8 is not available on Time Warner Cable. The other stations affected are WMUR-TV in Manchester, N.H., WNNE-TV in Hanover, N.H., and WCVB-TV in Boston.
Hearst and Time Warner Cable have been in negotiations over carrying fees. The cable company said in a written statement Tuesday Hearst was seeking a nearly 300 percent increase in a new agreement.
In the statement, Andrew Russell, communications manager for the cable company, called that "way out of line. That kind of outrageous increase is unfair to our customers and unsustainable for our business."
A message posted on Channel 8's website reads: "Negotiations for the renewal of the agreement that authorized Time Warner to provide its subscribers with our local news, network and other programming broadcast by WMTW are at an impasse."
Efforts to reach a spokesperson for that station or Hearst Corp. Tuesday were unsuccessful.
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local stations aren't
local stations aren't available where i am on dish network, and also weren't available on any of the cable television systems anywhere else i've lived in the past 10 years. know what we use for local stations? bunny ears and a converter box. cable companies stink when it comes to local stations. we got s****ed over one year because the cable company told me that if we bought their football package, we could watch the pats play that year. after it was all hooked up, we found out that we could watch every game being played that year everywhere in the country except for foxboro stadium because those games were not available for viewing in my area veazie at the time.
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If either side wants my sympathy, they're going to have to be more concrete than an approximate percentage. 300% sure sounds like a lot, but what if the old rate is only 1/3 of what most stations can expect? Then that means WMTW is just asking to be paid a fair price.
Get us some numbers without spin. What's Hearst asking for? What do other local stations normally get? How much more or less are they getting now?
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Losing Ch. 8 as I only watch it once a day for Jeopardy .. as I watch.ch. 13 for all my local news. I WISH TWC was not so CHEAP & p/up NFL REDZONE... Their Competition to the east (Comcast) offers the RedZone for FREE on their Basic Cable. TWC say"We would have to charge EVERYBODY for it" I don't think so.
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I can just imagine what kind of a rate reduction we will get for losing this station, not.
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I got a kick out of what Mr. Russell said, and I quote, "That kind of outrageous increase is unfair to our customers." Yeah, only WE can increase and increase and increase fares, no one else!.....Time Waner sucks!.
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