Mediacom Customers Seek Antenna Kits to View Dropped Channels
By Jeff Wilford, Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier, Iowa
Jan. 8–WATERLOO — Cable operator Mediacom Communications Corp. said it handed out more than 4,000 antenna kits to Des Moines area and Waterloo area subscribers who wanted to view channels dropped because of the dispute with Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc.
On Sunday, Mediacom said it had run out of antenna kits.
The Des Moines office handed out 4,000 antenna kits. The Mediacom office in Waterloo went through a couple hundred antenna kits before running out on Sunday, said Phyllis Peters, Mediacom spokeswoman.
More are expected to be available on Tuesday, the company said.
Twenty-two Sinclair broadcast stations in 12 states were pulled from the Mediacom cable lineup at 12:01 a.m. Saturday after the contract expired that allowed Mediacom to retransmit the stations’ signals. Among them: KGAN-TV in Cedar Rapids, a CBS affiliate, and KDSM in Des Moines, a Fox network affiliate.
Peters said that for most areas of Waterloo, except for the southern and southeastern most parts, it would be difficult or impossible to get the KGAN signal with rabbit ear-style antennae, like Mediacom is distributing.
Peters said about 6,000 antennas have been given to customers since Dec. 30.
She said the company had to absorb significant costs in equipment and overtime to give customers the antennas.
“We’re making this equipment free to our customers. What is Sinclair doing to serve people?” Peters said. “It’s in the public’s interest. We need to serve our customers.”
In Cedar Rapids, Mediacom workers handed out more than 1,000 antennas.
A bar manager in Des Moines quickly signed up for a DirecTV satellite television package to keep patrons happy.
“It would have been a major business disappointment,” said Phil Troge of the Waveland Coffee Shop. “It had to be rectified.”
Ben Anderson, owner of Dynamic Communications in Waterloo, said his business is seeing about twice the interest in DirecTV than usual for this time of year.
“All of our techs are working overtime, just trying to get people done as fast as possible. Our phone is just ringing off the hook with people with questions” about DirecTV, Anderson said. “Saturday was a lot of phone calls with questions … We had a lot more sales Sunday than Saturday, which is really unusual.”
Kurt Whiton, DirecTV’s area sales manager for Iowa and Nebraska, said DirecTV sales have been helped by the very public nature of dispute between Mediacom and Sinclair.
“There was an uptick when the first deadline approached (on Nov. 30), and then I think it died off in December,” Whiton said. “And now … with the actual pulling off of the stations, I think that’s caused an increase in call volume.”
Ed Pardini, senior vice president of the Mediacom division based in West Des Moines, also said it was impossible to predict how long KDSM and other Sinclair stations would be absent from Mediacom cable.
Similar cases in the television industry in the past have been short-lived, lasting a matter of days or weeks, he said.
KDSM and KGAN carry Iowa Hawkeye basketball games and National Football League playoff games. KDSM will carry Monday evening’s Ohio State-Florida national college football championship game.
Mediacom released a statement Saturday evening which said its senior executives spent the morning waiting to hear whether Sinclair would agree to enter into binding arbitration.
“Having heard nothing from Sinclair, we reached out again at 1:30 p.m. this afternoon with another request to enter into binding arbitration and a new proposal,” said John Pascarelli, Mediacom executive vice president of operations, in the statement on Saturday. “Sinclair rejected our latest offer, and again informed us they were unprepared to enter into arbitration and did not expect to make a decision until after the weekend.”
Sinclair argues that it provides some of the most popular shows on television and should be compensated accordingly. Mediacom contends that Sinclair is nothing more than a middleman for programming generated by the major broadcast networks, unlike cable channels that produce original programming.
Contact Jeff Wilford at (319) 291-1423 or jeff.wilford@wcfcourier.com.
—–
Copyright (c) 2007, Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier, Iowa
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
NASDAQ-NMS:MCCC, NASDAQ-NMS:SBGI, NYSE:DTV,