For three weeks, Suddenlink customers in the Greenville-New Bern, N.C., area have been unable to tune to the market’s ABC affiliate.
The reason? A retransmission consent agreement expired June 30, and there’s no new deal in place. The station’s owner, Sinclair Broadcast Group, now says there likely won’t be one — period.
The company’s WCTI-12 in New Bern posted a message to its website indicating that Suddenlink “has determined to discontinue the carriage” of WCTI.
That’s not necessarily true. As is the case in every retransmission consent fee dispute, it takes a MVPD and a broadcast station owner to agree to a new accord. In the majority of disputes, the MVPD and its advocacy groups — such as ACA Connects and the ATVA — rush to assail the broadcast TV station owner for hiking up their fees. Meanwhile, some broadcast TV companies have lashed out at DirecTV, Dish and cable TV service providers for not willing to negotiate fair compensation while they profit from over-the-air signals.
With the WCTI retrans deal’s expiration, “NewsChannel 12” offers statements indicating the carriage agreement is “unlikely to be renewed.” Further, WCTI says “it is certainly possible that Suddenlink will never carry WCTI in the future.”
But, is that because a new deal with new terms is on the table — terms that Suddenlink said no to, while refusing to extend the now-expired deal’s terms?
That’s not known. What is known is that Sinclair chose not to elect must-carry status for WCTI “in order to have the right to negotiate with the cable and satellite system to receive certain things, such as compensation and channel position, which it would not receive by making a must-carry election.”
As Sinclair sees it, “the relationship between WCTI and Suddenlink is essentially the same as the typical commercial relationship that exists between any wholesaler attempting to sell its product to a retailer so that the retailer can then sell the product to consumers in its market.”
Is this just a dispute about money?
That’s a question Sinclair poses and answers. “Although NewsChannel 12 does not believe it is productive to negotiate its private business relationships in the public, the inability to reach agreement with Suddenlink is about more than just money,” the company’s local management in New Bern, N.C., says.
WCTI-12 was highly impacted in 2018 by Hurricane Florence.
While WCTI’s staff and management also operate the market’s FOX affiliate, WYDO-14, it is owned by Cunningham Broadcasting via a Shared Services Agreement.
WCTI is still shown as an option for Suddenlink customers in the market on its official channel guide. There is no other ABC station on the lineup, creating a void for consumers.
CenturyLink is the other MVPD serving the New Bern, N.C., area.
