Third Company Involved in Hearst/TWC Retrans Blackout

The agency should take “appropriate enforcement” against Time Warner Cable’s “willful and repeated” rule violations, said the complaint filed late Friday. Nexstar thinks the operator “on an unauthorized basis in an illegal manner misappropriated our signals from three markets,” a spokesman said. “Nexstar intends to pursue all legal and regulatory remedies to cause Time Warner [Cable] to cease and desist misappropriating signals.”

Time Warner Cable is “acting well within our rights,” a spokeswoman said. It’s doing “as we have in the past in trying to help our subscribers through this,” she continued. “In a handful of markets, we're happy to be able to make arrangements to bring the national network programming from another city,” said the operator’s website (http://xrl.us/bm93wo): That’s “so our customers can still view their favorite network programming despite Hearst’s blackouts."

Time Warner Cable didn’t tell Nexstar and Mission Broadcasting, which gave the operator permission to carry in their local markets the three stations now being imported, 30 days beforehand, the complaint said. “The underlying purpose of the Notice Rules is to alert subscribers, franchise authorities and broadcast television stations to changes in programming services” before they're made, the emergency petition to the Media Bureau said. As the operator did in 2010 involving some of Nexstar’s stations in a case still pending at the commission, “Time Warner, again, is willfully disregarding the notice rules, as well as retransmitting signals without express consent.” Hearst and bureau spokespeople declined to comment for this story.

Such cases are rarely made, and even less frequently would the FCC decide on the merits because the blackout is usually resolved before the agency can prepare a decision on the signal importation-related complaint, said broadcast lawyer Scott Flick of Pillsbury Winthrop, uninvolved in the dispute. “Normally, these impasses don’t last very long, and by the time the FCC could gear up ... the matter is over.” Exceptions to network non-duplication and syndicated exclusivity rules allowing distant-signal importation by a cable operator include that the station’s coverage area overlaps with the distributor’s systems and that the outlet’s considered significantly viewed by the subscribers, Flick said. Stations must wait 60 days after notifying a cable operator of their network non-duplication rights before enforcing them, so in instances where the broadcaster didn’t act before a retrans blackout, it may need to wait for two months to enforce the rule, he noted.

Time Warner Cable’s importing the signals of two NBC and one CBS affiliate, while Bright House Networks -- on whose behalf TWC negotiates retrans -- is importing an NBC outlet. That’s according to data from Nexstar’s spokesman and from TWC’s website. Instead of carrying WLKY to video subscribers in the Louisville, Ky., area, Time Warner Cable is distributing the signal of another CBS affiliate, Nexstar’s WROC Rochester, N.Y. For Cincinnati Time Warner Cable subscribers and instead of Hearst’s WLWT, the operator’s distributing another NBC affiliate, Nexstar’s WTWO Terre Haute, Ind. And Nexstar’s WBRE(NBC) Wilkes Barre, Pa., is being imported by Time Warner Cable in place of Hearst’s NBC affiliates WNNE Hartford, Vt., WPTZ Plattsburgh, N.Y., and WXII Greensboro, N.C. Nexstar’s spokesman said Bright House is importing WBRE as well in place of WESH Orlando, Fla. The complaint also covered that importation.