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Mediacom, Sinclair deadline nears with no deal for WLOS
By Carey Phillips
With the deadline just hours away, no agreement has been reached regarding Mediacom’s right to continue carrying WLOS-TV on its cable system.
If an agreement or extension is not reached by midnight tonight (Thursday) WLOS, this area’s ABC affiliate, will be removed from local cable offerings.
Mediacom and Sinclair Broadcast Group, the owner of WLOS, have been in negotiations for months on a retransmission agreement regarding 22 Sinclair stations in 14 states.
Both sides in the issue have information on Web sites and have run spots on television promoting their views on the issue.
“What Sinclair representatives continually omit from this now public debate is the fact that Sinclair refused to accept any of our market-driven offers to provide fair and reasonable compensation,” said Maggie Blythe, regional senior manager of government relations for Mediacom. “Further, they blatantly disregard North Carolina consumers who Sinclair officials refer to as just a small share of the nationwide market for this giant broadcast owner.”
Jack Connors, WLOS general manager, has previously referred comment to Barry Faber, Sinclair’s general counsel. Faber had not returned a phone call by The Herald’s news deadline.
Sinclair is encouraging Mediacom subscribers to switch to DirecTV and is offering a partial rebate for those who do. That offer has been extended through Dec. 31.
Sinclair officials have also stated on television and on its Web site that Mediacom customers can receive stations over the air.
That’s not an option for most people in Jackson County. Very few local residents can receive the WLOS signal from its Mt. Pisgah transmitter. A translator that rebroadcast WLOS on channel 5 for more than 40 years went off the air last year when the owner of the property where the tower was located declined to renew the lease.
Jackson County and Sylva officials have discussed the issue at recent meetings and urged both sides to negotiate in good faith and reach an agreement.
WLOS is the only station in this television market based in Western North Carolina. Its news, sports and weather coverage are geared to WNC viewers, unlike stations based in South Carolina.
Local officials have said the loss of WLOS from local cable TV could compromise public safety in the event of a weather or other type of emergency.
“Sinclair continues to try to convince the public that Mediacom simply refuses to pay anything for continued carriage of the Sinclair stations,” said Joseph Young, Mediacom’s general counsel. “Nothing could be further from the truth. Sinclair’s public statements reflect, in my opinion, either an intentional effort to mislead the public or a misunderstanding of our position.”
Young said Mediacom has offered to let Sinclair pick any retransmission agreement Mediacom has negotiated with some 40 independent broadcast groups across the country. Another option Mediacom has given is for the cable company to accept terms of any retransmission agreement Sinclair has completed with comparable cable firms.
Mediacom has filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission alleging Sinclair has refused to negotiate in good faith.
Part of the filing states, “Sinclair indicated that its hardline tactics were intentionally designed to inflict ‘maximum pain’ given the ‘big stakes’ to Mediacom due to the fact that while these cable systems accounted for less than 3 percent of the Sinclair stations’ nationwide audience, Sinclair stations are retransmitted to over 50 percent of Mediacom’s cable system subscribers.”
In a letter to the FCC, Matt Polka, president and chief executive officer of the American Cable Association, said, “As alleged by Mediacom, Sinclair seeks to combine its market power over rural and small market cable systems with bad faith bargaining tactics to extract compensation far in excess of any measure of market value. In fact, ACA members report similar conduct by Sinclair in other markets. Sinclair aims to inflict ‘maximum pain’ on Mediacom, and the threat of imminent withdrawal of local network programming is central to that offensive strategy.”
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