“The CBS network has upped the ante with...
"The CBS network has upped the ante with a consumer scare campaign” about the potential retransmission consent blackout with Time Warner Cable, said two groups. Consumer Action and the League of United Latin American Citizens cited on-screen crawls on CBS…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
stations about the blackout, which may start as soon as Thursday morning (CD July 24 p21). “CBS is putting consumers in the middle of a fight they shouldn’t have to worry about,” said the two groups in a news release Wednesday. “While the current dispute affects only Time Warner Cable customers, the situation is likely to spread to other pay TV providers as retrans consent agreements expire and the scrapping begins all over again.” A CBS spokeswoman had no response to the groups’ statement. Citing the American Television Alliance of Time Warner Cable and other multichannel video programming distributors and some public interest groups seeking to change retrans rules, Consumer Action and LULAC said retrans fees are projected to more than double to more than $6 billion by 2018 from recent levels. Time Warner Cable was “among a number of companies that supported” Consumer Action’s 41st anniversary event in October, and the company may have backed the previous anniversary event as well, said Linda Sherry, director-national priorities for the group. Other “benefactors” for October’s event included AT&T and DirecTV, which like Time Warner Cable are members of the American Television Alliance. Google and Microsoft were among other sponsors of the event, according to its website, which Sherry referred us to (http://bit.ly/15gkNl8). She said the benefactor level is $5,000, in an email responding to our questions. Time Warner Cable is one among many MVPDs and broadcasters that contribute to LULAC, said Executive Director Brent Wilkes. “We publicly get support from all sides in this debate” on retrans, he said in response to our questions about financial ties between the group and companies affected by retrans. “We've had both sides present to us on the issue,” and LULAC isn’t “trying to pick a side on who should pay what” and doesn’t want blackouts, said Wilkes. “We represent the Latino consumer. And from the Latino consumer perspective, we believe they should have uninterrupted service they believe they're paying for when they subscribe” to an MVPD service, said Wilkes. He said Comcast, which owns both broadcast and cable properties, and ABC, Telemundo and Univision are among other contributors to LULAC.