Time Warner and Sinclair Battle Again.

[Islandguy43]

Some Retransmission Wars never end.

Sinclair forces Time Warner Cable to black out Fox station - FierceCable

 

[Mr Tony]

its not that. Looks like they are invoking the Syndex rule

Sinclair Broadcasting Group (Nasdaq: SBGI) has invoked its right under a rarely used non-duplication rule to force Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC-WI) to remove the Sinclair-owned Fox affiliate in Rochester in favor of its Buffalo-based Fox affiliate. The action impacted Time Warner Cable subscribers in some northern New York counties.

The blackout is sporadic, occurring only when the two stations are showing only the Fox national programming feeds. Local news was not impacted, but as soon as the newscast ended, the WUHF channel 12 signal was again blacked out.

They do that in some areas. An example here in Minnesota is Mankato which is 90 miles form Minneapolis and its own DMA. They had on OTA CBS only for years and added Fox subchannel in July 07. Cable still has Fox Minneapolis so when there are duplicated shows they black out Fox Minneapolis. SIde note Directv still gives customers there Fox Minneapolis while Dish gives them Fox Mankato

I remember years ago when I lived in Duluth, MN we has (what was at the time) UPN Minneapolis on cable. During the day we got the infamous "due to fcc rules we must black out this show. watch it on other channels" because the syndicated stuff was on local (network) channels...even if they showed it at 3:00AM it was still blacked out during the day on UPN 9

 

[Islandguy43]

We get that at times here too, due to Time Warner carrying CTV and CBC channels, and some MSG programing. If the exact programing is on CTV or CBC the same time as an American Network, they black it out, as they do on the MSG and MSG+ feeds for the Rangers or Islanders/Devils when playing Sabres. Strange one though, when Buffalo and Toronto play on a Saturday Night, the game is never blacked out from CBC HNIC on the actual CBC Channel (Chanel 5 - Toronto).

 

[Steve Mehs]

I don't really believe it's that big of a deal. For the WUTV and WUHF stuff it only applies to Wyoming, Genesee and Orleans Counties and the towns of Royalton and Hartland in Niagara County. These areas receive both Buffalo and Rochester locals. Sinclair is bitching that these areas are in the Buffalo market but even though Rochester claims significantly viewed status they still want the Rochester Fox affiliate, WUHF blacked out for network programming. Not really that big of deal as all the effected customers still get WUTV and WUTV HD.

Now TW has the same channel line ups for Orleans and those two towns in Niagara, as Royalton and Hartland are served by TW Rochester not TW Buffalo. How TW can get away with providing Rochester locals in areas of Niagara County is beyond me since Niagara (and Erie for that matter) are Buffalo only. I get Roch locals on QAM in Erie County, but that's a tad bit different then having access to them on my cable box.