Charter Communications could lose 11 local stations this week due to a fee fight with their owner, Meredith Corporation, which is charging that Charter is using its imminent merger with Time Warner Cable as leverage.
The Meredith-owned stations have posted notices at their web sites that their current agreement with Charter will expire on April 30 and that Charter subscribers could lose their signals on May 1 if a new deal is not signed by then.
The stations say Charter has been unwilling to negotiate a new pact because it will soon merge with Time Warner Cable, making it the third largest pay TV provider in the nation. Federal regulators said yesterday that they are preparing to approve the merger, which could give Charter more power in program disputes. Meredith suggests Charter is waiting until the merger is done so it can wield that power in this dispute.
"For months Charter told us it didn't think it had to negotiate because it is buying Time Warner Cable and Bright House. Those deals, worth more than $60 billion, will make Charter one of the biggest cable companies in the world. Charter will be dozens of times bigger than Meredith...But even when Charter is much bigger, it will still have to reach an agreement to carry (Meredith's stations)," the Meredith notice states.
Charter has not issued a comment on the dispute.
As usual in these fights, the two companies are fighting over how much Charter should pay to carry the local signals.
The 11 stations that could be blacked out on Charter are:
KMOV-TV, CBS affiliate in St. Louis; KPTV-TV, a Fox station in Portland, Oregon; KCTV-TV and KSMO-TV, the CBS and My Network affiliates respectively in Kansas City; WSMV-TV, the NBC station in Nashville; WGCL-TV, the CBS affiliate in Atlanta; WHNS-TV, the Fox station in Greenville, South Carolina; WFSB-TV, the CBS affiliate in Hartford, Connecticut; and WSHM-TV and WGGB-TV, the CBS affiliate and ABC/Fox stations respectively in Springfield, Massachusetts.
