With Sinclair Broadcast Group‘s retrans negotiations with Time Warner Cable going down to the wire, the company is prepared to pull 33 stations from the cable operator’s systems at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s.
TWC recently rejected an offer that would increase the monthly station license fee by roughly 10 cents per subscriber. According to Sinclair, TWC has yet to make a counter-proposal.
The Baltimore-based company owns 20 Fox, 17 MyTV, 9 ABC, 9 CW, 2 CBS affiliates as well as one NBC affiliate. They have stations in many top markets, including Minneapolis-St. Paul, Pittsburgh, and Cincinnati.
Barry Faber, Sinclair’s EVP and general counsel bemoaned TWC’s hard line negotiating. “We simply do not understand why Time Warner insists on being treated better than its competition, rather than accepting our equitable proposal to provide them equivalent or better pricing than is paid by their competition,” he said.