You might be wondering why I am blogging about Topeka station WIBW. Well, one reader of this blog had written me about the issue early this week and I wrote back asking for more info and now it seems as if the issue is coming down to a deadline. But in what may describe the complexities of the issue, neither party could agree for awhile on what the deadline was or when the current contract expired, Thursday or Friday. As of this blog's posting on Thursday night, WIBW says the contract ends at Midnight Friday, so unless a deal can be reached the signal will not be seen on Topeka and I think Manhattan Cox Cable systems, after 12:01 AM Saturday morning. WIBW is wanting to charge Cox to run its signal. I just posted comments from someone very angry at WIBW. You can read it by clicking on the comments of the previous post. The commenter believes if the parent company of WIBW, Gray, gets their way with Cox in Topeka its only a matter of time before it happens to sister station KAKE here in Wichita. If you comment on it, please click back on this topic, so I can keep all the comments on this topic under this subject heading. Here are links for articles from the Topeka newspaper which describes the issue well. The first was published Thursday morning and discusses the issues before the two sides decided when the deadline was. The 2nd link updates the situation since they agreed to Friday night as the deadline. Maybe this will be the first of two agreements in consecutive days. The last link is from WIBW, explaining its side of things. If you are from Cox or know of a link representing them, send it to me and I'll post that too. -Hal
http://cjonline.com/stories/022808/loc_251935671.shtml
http://cjonline.com/stories/022808/bre_coxwibw.shtml
http://www.wibw.com/freetv
Friday Morning Update - Now in an article in the Capital-Journal, WIBW's GM says if a deal is not reached the signal will not be made available anywhere on Cox including the digital tier. Previously, it had been reported, the HD signal would be available if a deal was not reached.
http://cjonline.com/stories/022908/bus_252274890.shtml
Saturday Update - Looks like Cox and WIBW are even closer to making nice now. Following up on Friday's update, WIBW's GM says they have made progress and are "in the same ballpark." In Saturday's Capital-Journal, it was also written that deals with other Gray stations including KAKE are being negotiated. -Hal
http://cjonline.com/stories/030108/bus_252624967.shtml
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6 comments:
WIBW has been hemmoraging views to KTKA for a year now. This will only hurt them more and it should.
This appears to be a Gray abnormality. A few other stations in bigger markets are but this is strange.
Most people outside of the city of Topeka but in their DMA can get KWCH or KCTV for CBS programming. It seems they have something to gain and all WIBW has is to lose.
And by the comments on each of the articles linked to this story, they are and will.
How dare TV stations ask for money from cable providers. It's not like they sell commercial insertion and go after the same local ad base that local TV stations pull from, reducing their revenue. Oh wait, they do. It's not like they bring hundreds of other channels into the home, again devaluing the commercial time on local TV. Or, ESPN, CNN, etc. don't get per-subscriber fees via cable. Oh yeah, they do, too.
If you want free HDTV, put up an antenna. Thanks to digital boradcasting it will look better than cable.
Hal - What are your thoughts on the coverage of the air tanker decision? Although I think KAKE broke the story, that was their highlite of the day and then KWCH really performed well, while it seemed as if it took until 10 for KSN to get orgainzed or enough of a crew in place to compete and beat KAKE, but not even come close to KWCH.
wow, Gray broadcasting doing something shi**y? i'm shocked!
not.
KAKE cut in about 3:30 followed by KWCH a few minutes later. I don't think KSN went on at all until 5.
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