Cable One said that Northwest Broadcasting has pulled its stations from the cable operator after they were unable to reach a new retransmission consent agreement.
Northwest’s stations are in Idaho and Mississippi. In Cleveland and Grenada, Miss., the company runs the affiliates of all of the Big Four broadcast networks.
The old agreement expired at midnight, and the stations were no longer available via Cable One at that point.
."For several weeks we have been in negotiations with Northwest Broadcasting over programming fees and we have made every effort to reach a fair deal,” said Cable One VP John Gosch. “However, Northwest Broadcasting is demanding a rate increase of nearly 70% over their previous contract with Cable One– a rate higher than paid to any television broadcaster in any of Cable ONE’s other 40+ markets. Northwest Broadcasting also refused our request for an extension, so that we could keep these channels up and running for our customers while negotiations continued.”
Cable One is directing customers are being directed to www.StopProgrammingHikes.com for updates on these negotiations.
“Unfortunately, Northwest currently controls all major network broadcast stations in both Cleveland and Grenada, leaving constituents in these markets without local news, weather, sports and other broadcast programming,” Gosch said. “We’re disappointed that Northwest has not accepted our counterproposal, which we consider more than fair. Cable ONE has successfully negotiated for the carriage of hundreds of broadcast stations and we hope to do so with Northwest Broadcasting very soon.”
