WHDH Owner Says NBC to Yank Affiliation, Plans to Fight

By Kevin Eck 

NBC Owned Television Stations plans to pull the affiliation from WHDH and launch its own Boston station when the WHDH-NBC contract expires Dec. 31, reports the Boston Globe.

“We are going to contest it,” Ed Ansin, owner of current NBC affiliate WHDH told the Globe. “I have a feeling a year from now we will still be the NBC affiliate. That’s how serious we think the violations are.”

Among Ansin’s concerns are whether it is in the public interest for NBC to move its programming to a station that reaches a smaller audience than WHDH’s signal. Cable giant Comcast Corp. took control of NBC about five years ago. Ansin said that under an agreement made with the Federal Communications Commission, Comcast and NBC committed to maintaining a certain level of free over-the-air broadcasting.

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Ansin said he is meeting with Senator Ed Markey today to discuss whether Comcast and NBC are in violation of its FCC agreement.

Ansin’s legal team is ready to challenge NBC’s decision, which he says they might announce today, to launch NBC Boston on a digital subchannel of WNEU, an NBC-owned Telemundo station licensed to Merrimack, New Hampshire, but serving the Boston market.

TVSpy asked NBC Owned Stations for comment. We will update when we hear back.

[New England One]

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