WLKY Begins Cable Negotiations

WLKY-TV posted what was once a fairly routine notice on its website today.

Notice to Insight cable subscribers: WLKY-TV's parent company, Hearst Television, is currently negotiating a renewal of its carriage agreement with Insight.

If negotiations are not successfully concluded before July 1, 2012, you may not be able to view WLKY on Insight if carriage is no longer authorized, unless Insight elects to continue carrying our Signal which it asserts it has the right to do until July 25th.

The negotiations over how much the cable provider should pay to rebroadcast a local station's content are common, and last-minute notices that a station may no longer be available over cable are almost just as common. Both sides of the debate are media companies, and can therefore use their positions to share their sides.

 

These warnings seem a bit more dire in Louisville now, given the fact that the last act of brinkmanship resulted in both sides going over the brink when  WDRB did not reach an agreement with Time Warner Cable (owner of Insight) in time, and the station was off cable for several days. 

 

Time Warner is new in Louisville, and during the outage, WDRB General Manager said he believed Time Warner was in part trying to send a message to other TV providers.

 

“[They're saying] we're from New York. We're going to do it differently then you've done it before. Look at what happened to WDRB because they didn't do it the way we wanted to do it," said Lamb at the time. “[The other local stations] know exactly what we're going through. It's one of those 'There but for the grace of God go I.' They know they're next."