Most CW Shows Set to Wrap
By Kimberly Pierceall, The Press-Enterprise, Riverside, Calif.
Apr. 20–Shows on the CW Network may be wrapping up their seasons, but Coachella Valley cable subscribers will get to watch them for just the first time starting Saturday.
Time Warner Cable and Gulf-California Broadcasting, the group that operates the local CW affiliate, signed an agreement this week allowing shows such as “America’s Next Top Model” and “Veronica Mars” to reach subscribers nearly seven months after the network launched nationwide.
Time Warner Cable is a subsidiary of media giant Time Warner Inc., which owns 50 percent of the CW Network with CBS Corp. But the cable company had barred CW from its lineup until it reached an agreement with the desert affiliate.
“It did strike me as odd,” said Bob Allen, general manager of Gulf-California. “It’s a very large company and the divisions often find themselves competing with each other.”
Allen said the competition among cable providers in the region is also growing with EchoStar Communications, Direct TV and Verizon entering the fray.
“At the end of the day, they need us and we need them,” he said. According to Nielsen Media Research, 82.7 percent of the Coachella Valley’s 142,730 television-viewing households subscribe to cable.
“It’s good programming and they needed it and wanted it and we needed carriage for CW. We finally reached the point where everybody really wanted something to happen,” he said.
Most of the programming, such as, “Gilmore Girls,”"Smallville ” and “Seventh Heaven,” will wrap up their seasons starting May 13. But Allen doesn’t think viewers will tune out on programming they’ve been missing since September.
The agreement does arrive in time for residents to watch “Hidden Palms, ” a show filmed here and based on a teen living in the Coachella Valley, which starts May 30.
Kathi Jacobs, spokeswoman for Time Warner Cable Desert Cities, wasn’t aware of the agreement’s details but, “part of the consideration had to do with the digital transition coming up in 2009,” she said. “It was much more complex than normal.”
—–
To see more of The Press-Enterprise, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.PE.com.
Copyright (c) 2007, The Press-Enterprise, Riverside, Calif.
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.
TWX, TWX, CBS, DISH, DTV, NWS, VZ,