Tuesday, July 19, 2005

Deals may be bad news for Nexstar Broadcasting

Nexstar Broadcasting's hopes that other local broadcasters may join the fight to receive retransmission fees from cable companies may have been dealt a blow Monday when Cox Communications reached retransmission deals for Clear Channel Communications Inc., and Raycom Media Inc.'s analog and digital signals.
Cox senior vice president of programming Bob Wilson told Multichannel News, "Along with other deals Cox has signed recently, this demonstrates our willingness to work with local broadcasters to reach terms that support the growth of the broadcaster and Cox."
The article said the Clear Channel agreement covers two NBC stations, two CBS stations, one ABC station, four Fox stations, and five UPN stations in Eureka, Bakersfield and Santa Barbara, Calif., Middle America Cox/Arkansas; Cox Gulf Coast; Tulsa, Okla., and Kansas.
The article said the deal with Raycom involves five CBS stations, one NBC station and one UPN station and covers markets in Tuscon, Ariz., Middle America Cox/Arkansas; Middle America Cox/Louisiana; Middle America Cox, East Texas; Baton Rouge, La.; Cleveland, Ohio; and Hampton Roads and northern Virginia.
The terms of the deal were not announced.
Nexstar Broadcasting pulled its stations' programming off Cable One and Cox markets in Joplin, Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana at the beginning of the year, and has announced intentions to do so in every market in which it has stations if the cable companies do not reimburse Nexstar for retransmitting its programming.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

You said the terms were not announced...this may be a huge victory for Nexstar. Maybe Cox is paying for the signal. We won't know until the terms are announced.

Randy said...

You may very well be right, but since Nexstar has been trying to get Cox and Cable One to just pay anything, I still have to wonder.

Anonymous said...

This is without question another hit for Nexstar. No other company is going forward with plans to pull signals. They see what has happened to Nexstar stock (down 50% since pulling stations off local cable in Texas, Louisiana and Missouri) and want nothing to do with it. Broadcasters are a bunch of snakes who will say publicly they support Nexstar's stance but their actions, or lack thereof speak much louder than their press releases.