GCI, the Liberty Broadband-owned MVPD, on January 1 discontinued carriage of “FOX Alaska,” “ABC Alaska,” and “The CW Alaska” on a newly launched “skinny bundle” offering designed to discourage subscribers from fleeing to such services as Hulu and YouTube TV.
It only took until Victoria Day in neighboring Canada for a new retransmission consent agreement to come to fruition, with the three stations finally restored for local cable TV subscribers.
Vision Alaska and Coastal Television now have a retrans accord in place with GCI. It was a statewide matter of concern, because of the unique nature of Alaska’s broadcast TV operations.
Because no fresh retrans deal could come to fruition at the start of 2021, Anchorage-based KYUR (ABC) and KTBY (FOX) went dark. Those stations serve as the originating stations for satellites KATN in Fairbanks and KJUD in Juneau. And, those stations have ABC as the primary DT1 feed, with FOX and The CW on the DT2 and DT3 feeds, respectively.
At the time, GCI, as its typical with MVPDs, pointed fingers at the broadcast TV station owner. “We are still negotiating with Vision Alaska and Coastal Television to resume carrying these channels, but they are asking for a nearly 40% rate increase that is not the best outcome for GCI and our valued TV customers,” GCI said in January. “Because we did not reach a deal by the deadline, they have pulled our right to continue bringing these channels to our customers. We are working hard to come to a reasonable agreement to restore these channels and will be offering bill credits to eligible customers.”
That hard work, finally, has seemingly paid off.
“We’d like to express our sincere gratitude to our customers for their patience as we navigated these challenging negotiations,” GCI Chief Communications Officer Heather Handyside said in a statement. “Now, GCI customers can once again watch their favorite programs on ABC, FOX and CW.”
The impasse impacted one’s ability to watch the 2021 NBA Playoffs in full, with coverage on ABC.
Coastal Television had not offered comment by Noon local time on Wednesday.
