Friday, December 31, 1999

Talks stall between KIII, AT&T

Unless KIII signs a new retransmission consent agreement with AT&T Cable Services today, the cable system will be forced to black out the ABC station's signal to its cable customers as of 12:01 a.m. Saturday.
   The blackout would affect only the 85,000 AT&T Cable subscribers in the Corpus Christi area, not customers of any other cable system or viewers who don't have cable and watch KIII over the air.
   KIII's previous agreement, which is renewed every three years, expires at midnight. Without the agreement, the cable company is forced by law to remove the station from its lineup, where it is seen on channel 5.
   If AT&T drops KIII, it most likely will be replaced on channel 5 by the HBO Family Channel, which shows family-friendly G- and PG-rated movies and other programs.
   The blackout comes at a bad time for cable customers, who could miss this weekend's college football bowl games: the Citrus, Rose and Orange on New Year's Day; the Fiesta on Sunday and the Sugar Bowl national championship matchup between Florida State and Virginia Tech on Tuesday.
   Free A/B switches
   If KIII and AT&T come to terms quickly after the blackout, the cable company would put KIII back on immediately. If they don't reach an agreement, cable viewers also will miss several installments of "Monday Night Football," the return of the popular game show "Who Wants to Be A Millionaire" on Jan. 9 and the Super Bowl on Jan. 30.
   AT&T is offering its subscribers free A/B switches that allow viewers to shift between a broadcast antenna and cable. AT&T's office at 4060 S. Padre Island Drive will be open Saturday.
   Earlier this week KIII's corporate operations manager, Bob White, had said he thought the agreement, which allows the cable system to retransmit KIII's signal, would be worked out by today. AT&T received consent agreements from all the other broadcast affiliates in town weeks ago.
   But talks between the cable company and the TV station stalled on Wednesday.
   "We hit a bump in the road and I don't know if we can get over it or not," White said.
   Additional space sought
   That "bump" is KIII owner Mike McKinnon's request for additional channel space on AT&T's lineup, specifically cable channel 8, which currently telecasts The Discovery Channel. Though McKinnon has not told AT&T what he intends to program on that channel, he has mentioned either the UPN affiliate, KTOV, or the Pax-TV affiliate, KXPX, recently acquired by his stepson Don Gillis.
   McKinnon stepped up the pressure on the cable company Wednesday when KIII began running announcements calling AT&T the big monopoly and urging cable customers to call and demand rebates if KIII is dropped.
   Meanwhile, AT&T began running TV announcements and newspaper ads declaring that they "want to carry KIII's programming but may not be able to in 2000."
   AT&T had hoped KIII would at least agree to a 30-day extension of the agreement to allow further time for negotiation.
   "But are we sure that might happen now? No," said Scott Sobel, AT&T's regional director of communications. Sobel and AT&T division counsel Jerome J. Kashinski flew in from the company's corporate headquarters in Denver on Thursday afternoon to meet with KIII's White.
   No free channels for a while
   Sobel said that AT&T doesn't want to remove a popular channel like Discovery to make way for whatever McKinnon has in mind and there is no other available space on the current lineup. "We're channel locked until we can rebuild the system in about 18 months," said Sobel. "We were hoping Mr. McKinnon would be patient. We can negotiate with him for a second channel when the time comes for us to expand the system."
   Sobel also said that the extra channel space wasn't the only sticking point. McKinnon also has asked for what Sobel termed a big chunk of advertising spots promoting KIII elsewhere on AT&T, such as on the A&E channel. The spots would be greatly subsidized by AT&T, which, Sobel said, "would have a material effect on our media sales and cash flow."
   Trip puts crimp in talks
   McKinnon has been unwavering in his assertion that AT&T unfairly subsidizes NBC station KRIS and its sister stations, Fox affiliate KDF and Telemundo affiliate KAJA, by allowing them to occupy three spots on the AT&T channel lineup, said Sobel.
   But Sobel points out that KDF and KAJA already were shown on TCI Cablevision, which later became AT&T, when the stations were acquired by KRIS.
   Sobel said negotiations were somewhat hampered by McKinnon's being in San Diego, Calif., on Thursday.
   "We'd be tickled to death if Mr. McKinnon would talk to us face-to-face," said Sobel. "Or he could call us collect on AT&T long distance. We'd happily accept the reverse charges."
  
  

 
Index of Elaine's columns | Arts & Entertainment | Restaurant Reviews | Best Bets: Today - The Week | Columns | Home Page

---

  © 1999 Corpus Christi Caller Times, a Scripps Howard newspaper. All rights reserved.