“American Idol” will continue to be broadcast on local televisions.
Comcast Corp. and Sinclair Broadcasting Group reached an agreement Friday, avoiding a March 10 deadline that could have pulled local channels from viewers in the Baltimore area. This includes WBFF-Fox 45, home of popular shows such as “American Idol” and “24.”
The deal is a four-year contract that will last through March 1, 2011. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed, but it was announced the agreement will provide for the continued carriage of digital multicast channels that are currently available in the Baltimore region.
“There have been statements made by Comcast that would lead one to believe we weren?t getting anything at all for the retransmission, but that?s not true. We don?t do deals like that with no consideration for retransmission,” said Barry Faber, general counsel for Sinclair Broadcasting Group.
The points of contention between the two sides were the compensation for the retransmission rights and the added value of other services.
“If you ignore value of the retransmission rights, what they?re paying us is in excess of the value of the other things we?re providing,” Faber said. “Comcast implied that it?s not [in excess] and I think that?s not true.”
Earlier this month, Sinclair had a tentative deadline of March 1 at 2 a.m. to reach a retransmission deal with Comcast, or it might have pulled local channels out of Comcast customers? homes.
Despite not reaching an agreement, positive negotiations led the pair to extend the deadline to Saturday.
This is the latest in the conflict between Sinclair, a Hunt Valley-based broadcasting company, and cable providers regarding the right to charge distributors a fee for retransmitting area stations that could otherwise be viewed free of charge. Locally, these include Fox 45 and WNUV-CW 54.
Previously, Sinclair was in a dispute with Middletown, N.Y.-based Mediacom Communications Corp. for several months. The struggle resulted in a public battle that included letters to congressmen and the Federal Communications Commission.
Before the sides ultimately agreed to a deal, Sinclair pulled more than a dozen channels from Mediacom, affecting nearly 700,000 viewers.
In a March 1 article in The Examiner about the dispute, Faber was reported as saying Sinclair expects to receive around $48 million in retransmission fees in 2007, more than double what it got the previous year.
