Charter Cable will drop WSB-TV and its second digital channel MeTV at midnight tonight because Charter has refused to enter into an agreement that would pay fair value for WSB-TV.
“Cox Media Group and Charter were working diligently to come to a fair and reasonable agreement,” said Tim McVay, vice president and general manager of Channel 2 WSB-TV. “However, it is now clear than an agreement will not be reached. For this reason, the station has aired crawls alerting Charter subscribers that WSB-TV and MeTV will be dropped from the lineup on January 1, 2014,” McVay continued.
The crawl said to call Charter at 1-888-438-2427 and tell the cable provider not to drop WSB-TV and METV.
Attention Charter Subscribers: on January 1, 2014, Charter Cable will drop WSB-TV Channel 2 and MeTV Channel 126 from its lineup. If you are a Charter Cable subscriber, call Charter at 1-888-438-2427 to tell them do not drop WSB-TV and MeTV.
Barring a last minute deal, Charter will black out the station’s feed at midnight during “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin Eve with Ryan Seacrest.” Charter subscribers will lose Channel 2 Action News newscasts and ABC programming on WSB-TV like “Good Morning America,” “The View,” “World News Tonight with Diane Sawyer,” and ABC Prime Time programs like “Scandal,” “Modern Family” and “The Bachelor.”
On New Year’s Day, Charter subscribers will miss the Citrus and Rose Bowl Parades on WSB-TV, and the Capital One Bowl pitting the South Carolina Gamecocks against the Wisconsin Badgers.
WSB-TV’s parent company, Cox Media Group, is handling the negotiations for WSB-TV with Charter. The media company based in Atlanta also owns and operates TV stations in three other markets in which Charter operates: San Francisco (FOX), Seattle (CBS) and Charlotte (ABC) markets.
CMG has retransmission deals with every other multichannel video programming distributor including Comcast, AT&T, DirecTV, and Dish Network. In fact, no CMG station has ever gone dark as a result of a retransmission consent dispute.
Under the present rules of the 1992 Cable Television Protection and Competition Act, cable operators and other multichannel video programming distributors must obtain permission from broadcasters before carrying their programming. In exchange, a broadcaster may propose that the operator pay cash to carry the station or ask for any other form of consideration. The cable operator may refuse the broadcaster's proposal and not carry the programming.
The government enacted the law to protect local broadcasters whose programming typically ranks as the largest viewed of all channels on the cable line up. Until then, cable operators secured the local stations’ over the air signals for free while paying for programming from most non-broadcast channels like HBO, Weather Channel, ESPN, HGTV, Showtime and many others.
Viewers can watch the station’s broadcasts for FREE over the air in High Definition by installing an inexpensive HD antenna. The TV station also streams all of its newscasts live on wsbtv.com and on its mobile website and apps. Viewers can also follow the latest news, weather and traffic from Channel 2 Action News on Twitter @WSBTV and on WSB-TV’s Facebook page:
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Viewers can call Charter at 1-888-438-2427 and encourage the cable provider to continue airing Channel 2 WSB-TV.
WSB-TV is operated by Cox Media Group, which includes The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
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