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Media General has become the latest station owner to exploit our nation’s outdated federal broadcast television laws in an effort to boost its bottom line.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.
looking for information on house fire yesterday in Clear Lake. Details wanted.
KIMT is off he air… Uh never noticed…..
We were able to watch ZOO by going to CBS and watching it on our computer. There are many programs that are available to watch on a computer at no cost.
We will continue to watch the shows on CBS, until they get this fixed. We watch the news on other stations and can go to KIMT and watch the weather and news by a link on their webpage on our computer.
you can’t watch it the same day it is on cbs but you can the next day right?
KIMT developed a marketing strategy that ultimately did them in. They agressively promoted this Iowa Minnesota together mantra and unsuccessfully competed with KAAL and KTTC. Why would mediacom purchase a third southern Minnesota feed when they already have two? It aint gonna happen since this market is already over saturated.
Very good point. KIMT is mostly unsuccessful at everything they do, including mobbing funerals to profit from the tears of the mourners. Pretty much low-life scum, in my opinion. They can’t even get the weather right; the bald tool who calls it is denser than a German dumpling. It’d be nice if the KIMT plague headed north to Rochester for good.
The only thing I watch on CBS is NCIS.
@maybe-I used to watch that but like the rest of CBS it has gotten old and tired. I do like the new summer show “ZOO”. So far it is pretty good. Not much else on there I want to watch.
In Rochester, you’re competing against Twin Cities stations, not north Iowa stations, and for CBS, that’s WCCO. No way KIMT is going to win that fight, ever.
Probably true. They’d be laughed out of the market. Closed for good, pretty much a fitting end.
What bothers me about this is the long term care facilities, most of them have mediacom. Those folks love to watch the local news and wheel of fortune. I know it sounds silly, but taking something like this from their daily schedule can be very distressing to some of them.
Ah, the batter for profit hits the local tv market. No matter which corporation wins, the consumer will pay for it. Watch prices go UP!
At first I wasn’t sure who’s “fault” it was. Was Mediacom getting off cheap and Media General just wanted “their fair share?” Was Media General extorting Mediacom for a money grab? Then I received an “Open Letter to Mediacom Customers.” In it, it says ” If we agreed to Media General’s demands, KIMT would have become the most expensive broadcast channel in all of the 1,500 communities that Mediacom serves across 22 states.” Assuming that’s true, it does seem like it is Media General’s fault.
No company, (Media General,KIMT), should be able to use the blackout strategy to get more money from users of it’s service. Especially two times the amount being paid originally. CBS is usually a good broadcaster, but KIMT to me, is basically worthless.
Drop mediacom cable and just use their high speed internet, it’s actually pretty good. Get local channels over an antenna and get a subscription to Netflix for $7.99 a month. Save yourself tons of money and headache.
I dropped mediacom years ago because their internet was down almost more than it was up. Never had any problems with anybody else.
@maybe-I have a relative that has the same problem. He says he loses his internet every day and then lose everything he was working on. He is going to dump it and go back to Century Link. I have almost no problem at all with Century Link.
I have century link and direct tv, should have done it sooner.
With Mediacom you can’t get internet without cable TV.
That is not true. We just dumped cable TV and increased the speed of our internet plan. You don’t need cable TV to have internet access through Mediacom. They were very accommodating. We lowered our bill from $180.00 per month for hundreds of channels we never watched to $39.95 per month for Prime Plus high speed internet.
Wise move!
I have Mediacom Internet and Dish Network. Dish is less expensive than Direct TV, especially if you are not a big movie watcher.
The package I have with direct tv has 2 history channels and american heros channel and in order to get those on dish I would have to go with a more expensive package. The thing is I only watch around 5 channels and I have to pay for 220.
Try SLINGTV. Google it. I turned off my DirecTV months ago and it was best thing I did.
I also recommend SLINGTV, just google it. Works very, very well.
As more and more people opt to get their entertainment on line the cable companies are losing more and more revenue. So, they try to raise prices on what is left of their subscribers to make up for it. Unfortunately they are their own worst enemy. By the nature of their service they can not cut the field employees or they will lose their feed. Sat. T.V. is faced with the same problem. Both force people to pay for programming they don’t want. It is costing them business but they won’t change. CBS has very few programs I am interested in.
After hearing KIMT’s GM, Steve Martinson’s stupid comments, I could care less if I get KIMT back on my cable line-up but I would like a CBS station, as we do watch some of their programs. I don’t like how they are holding us high paying customers hostage on this, poor business practice! There are MANY crap channels they could dump to help pay for CBS.
Send up the Des Moines Affiliate. The KIMT building would make a fine addition to the vacancies in the Crescent.
Yes, we NEED to know what’s going on in our own capital city and our own legislature. Those are the laws that affect us, not Minnesota’s!
I would love to be able to watch KCCI!