Young Broadcasting Inc. Class A (fka YBTVQ)

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Other local TV stations likely to seek compensation from cable, satellite companies

WLUK, Time Warner still don't have agreement

While some Green Bay Packers fans wonder whether Sunday’s game will be carried on Time Warner Cable, executives at local stations have a wary eye on negotiations between the cable provider and LIN TV, the parent company of WLUK.

The two corporations continued to trade proposals today.

One sticking point apparently is compensation LIN is seeking for Time Warner to carry its stations’ programming.

Compensation will factor into coming negotiations with other local commercial stations.

“I think that most local broadcasters will be seeking fair compensation for cable companies and other delivery systems to carry their signal in the future,” said Don Carmichael, general manager of WBAY, Channel 2, which is owned by Young Broadcasting Inc.

Local stations’ retransmission consent contracts come due at various times.
Carmichael said he couldn’t say when WBAY/Young’s contract is up, “but it won’t be long.”

The contract of WFRV, Channel 5, does not come up until 2010, but general manager R. Perry Kidder is keenly interested in the outcome of the Time Warner-LIN dispute.

“I don’t think there’s a television station in the country that isn’t going to try to get a fair market value for their product, so you can include us as one of those,” Kidder said.

Liberty Media is the holding company for WFRV, but the station likely will negotiate on its own “because we’re our own company,” Kidder said.

Wisconsin Public Television will not seek compensation.

“We’re not in a business, we’re in a service,” said James Steinbach, the director of television for the six-station network.

“Our goal is to get as broad of access as we possibly can,” he said. “We don’t want to do anything that gets in the way of access.”

If no agreement is reached between Time Warner and LIN by the weekend, the Fox broadcast of Sunday’s game at the Seattle Seahawks won’t air on the cable provider for the second week.

Source: http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081009/GPG0101/81009029/1207/GPG01