Sinclair Broadcasting Fades to Black for Mediacom Cable Customers

Cable customers in a countless number of cities served by Mediacom Cable got a rude awakening on Saturday, January 6, 2007 as they turned on ther television equipment only to find at least one of their local stations blacked out from their channel lineup.

The culprit? Sinclair Broadcasting Group, which since at least November 2006 has been in dispute with Mediacom over how much they should pay each other for Mediacom to have the right to retransmit the signals of Sinclair-owned television stations such as CBS affiliate KGAN in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. As a result, Mediacom last night blacked out several Sinclair-owned stations less than an hour after midnight. At least 22 local-market stations are afected, including six Fox affiliates, four CW affiliates, four ABC affiliates, one CBS affiliate, one NBC affiliate and six affiliates of MyNetworkTV - which replaces UPN and the WB on stations not transitioned to the CW following the merger of those two networks - and more than 800,000 cable subscribers served by Mediacom in thirteen states - Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Minnesota, Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee, South Carolina, Virginia and Wisconsin - are also affected. (Source: the Asociated Press)

Prior to the blackout, Sinclair has repeatedly warned viewers of the potential-but-now-realized consequences of the dispute on the stations which the company owns - even going as far as to suggest an alternative television content distributer as an alternative. That alternative, satellite broadcaster DirecTV, will continue to be eligible for a rebate ofered through Sinclair Broadcasting for customers who choose to switch through at least the end of the month.

However, representatives of Mediacom Cable still hope that the situation is only a temporary setback. Regardless of the situation, Mediacom has offered to take the case into binding arbitration but is still awaiting a response from Sinclair concerning that offer. And if the dispute had gone into arbitration, Mediacom would still be able to broadcast the affected stations until one or both sides reaced a decision on the matter.

In a conference call the previous night, Mediacom Chairman and CEO Rocco B. Commisso said that Sinclair basically "made the case that they want to get paid like cable networks." However, he (meaning Commisso) believes that "they (meaning Sinclair) certainly don't behave like cable networks." Yet Sinclair vice president and general counsel Barry Faber said Sinclair was only asking for a small piece of of what Mediacom pays for niche-market cable networks - in fact, Sinclair argues that since it provides a lot of popular television shows across several networks, the compensation they receive for retransmision rights should essentially match up with the expectations of the programming provided.

"If they were taking off Animal Planet, I don't think this would be quite the big issue that it is," Faber explained in a statement. "The reason it's a big issue is that people care about our television stations because they're popular."