A blackout of about a dozen Hearst TV stations on Time...
A blackout of about a dozen Hearst TV stations on Time Warner Cable continued (CD July 11 p18) for a second full day Wednesday. The broadcaster called the operator’s “characterization of the percentage increase in carriage fees” as a 300…
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percent rate hike “inaccurate.” Instead, Hearst “sought a reasonable increase consistent with the increased costs we have to pay for our highly valued programming and the carriage fees now paid to us by Time Warner’s competitors,” President David Barrett said Tuesday night. Time Warner Cable “is seeking a significant discount of market-based fees that is neither fair nor reasonable,” he said. “The fees we are asking are based on the fees we are being paid (with no disruption of service) by other cable companies in over 150 other recently concluded agreements -- this fact is the real measure, not Time Warner’s exaggerated and distorted claims, of the fairness of our proposal.” A Time Warner Cable spokeswoman said in response to Barrett’s comments that a near tripling of retrans rates “is not reasonable."