PROVIDENCE – WLNE-TV ABC 6 is warning Dish Network Corp. subscribers that the satellite TV provider could drop the station on Friday if the two sides can’t reach a new deal on how much Dish should pay to broadcast WLNE.
“We need to give viewers a heads up,” Steve Doerr, vice president and general manager of WLNE, told Providence Business News.
The two sides moved closer to reaching an agreement on Wednesday morning, Doerr said, and he expressed hope that a final settlement could be reached by the end of the day. “I’m optimistic we’ll make a deal,” he said.
Full Channel Inc. and Charter Communications Inc., whose current contracts with the station also expire on Wednesday, are not in danger of losing WLNE, Doerr said. Its current contracts with Cox Communications Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. do not expire for a few more years.
A spokeswoman for Englewood, Colo.-based Dish said the company does not comment on negotiations.
The dispute between WLNE and Dish is part of a larger battle going on nationally between broadcasters and TV providers over retransmission fees, which companies such as Dish and Cox Communications Inc. pay to carry local stations on their systems.
With local TV advertising hit hard by the recession and the ongoing migration of viewers to cable channels and other forms of media, broadcasters are looking to get more revenue from cable, satellite and other TV service providers. The most lucrative cable network, Walt Disney Co.’s ESPN, gets about $4 per subscriber from cable companies, according to The New York Times.
The most high-profile fight currently is between Time Warner Cable and News Corp., which is threatening to remove its Fox stations from the cable provider’s system if Time Warner does not agree to pay about $1 a month per subscriber for Fox.
“Everybody knows the economics of television is changing,” Doerr said. “If ESPN is worth $4 … well, what’s the Bowl Championship Series on ABC worth? What’s ‘Lost’ worth? That’s kind of the context that we’re trying to conduct these negotiations in.”
