MASON CITY – If you are among the segment of the North Iowa region which watches the KIMT television station, you have now noticed that the CBS affiliate is off the air in a dispute with Mediacom cable company.
The following is Mediacom’s explanation as to why it yanked KIMT (and a few other CBS stations) off the air:
A blackout is an increasingly common negotiation tactic that channel owners use to force cable and satellite companies to pay unreasonable rate increases during contract renewals. Media General, the owner of KWQC-NBC (Davenport, IA/Rock Island-Moline, IL), KIMT-CBS/MNT (Mason City, IA), KELO-CBS/MNT (Sioux Falls, SD), WANE-CBS (Fort Wayne, IN), WAVY-NBC and WVBT-FOX (Norfolk-Portsmouth-Newport News, VA), WTHI-CBS/FOX (Terre Haute, IN), WKRN-ABC (Nashville, TN), KSNT-NBC and KTMJ-FOX (Topeka, KS), KSNW-NBC (Wichita-Hutchison, KS), WIAT-CBS (Birmingham, AL), WOTV-ABC and WOOD-NBC (Grand Rapids-Kalamazoo-Battle Creek, MI), WBAY-ABC (Green Bay-Appleton, WI), WFNA-CW (Mobile, AL/Pensacola, FL) and KRON-CW (San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose, CA), believes that by holding Mediacom customers hostage they can extract a higher price for their product than if they relied on objective criteria to value their stations such as ratings, quality of content, etc.
Much like your local gas station, Mediacom is the retail distributor of products that we purchase at wholesale. Just like the price of oil affects the price of gas at the pump, the price of cable and satellite television service is impacted by wholesale cost of the channels we carry. The fees we pay to retransmit local broadcast stations ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC are by far our fastest growing wholesale cost component.
Media General has become the latest station owner to exploit our nation’s outdated federal broadcast television laws in an effort to boost its bottom line.
After extensive negotiations towards a new agreement, Media General is still demanding more than double the per subscriber price paid under the prior contract. Since these costs will ultimately be absorbed by the hardworking residents of small towns and cities across Alabama, California, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia and Wisconsin, we have repeatedly communicated to Media General that their outrageous financial demands are unacceptable.
Mediacom remains willing to leave the stations on while negotiations continue, but in an attempt to force Mediacom to accept a bad deal, Media General has resorted to using the threat of a blackout to hold our customers hostage. Unfortunately, this ruthless tactic has become the calling card of the broadcast television industry in recent years.
Mediacom is continuing to work hard to achieve a viable and affordable solution; however, the decision to pull the stations from your channel lineup rests entirely with Media General.
