Retrans War Redux in Spokane.(KAYU-TV)(Column)

Broadcasting & Cable, January, 2007

By Paul Greeley

When I read that KAYU, the Fox affiliate in Spokane, had yanked its signal from the Time Warner cable system in a retransmission fight [1/1, p. 5], I couldn't help but remember when Nexstar Broadcasting did the same thing in 2005. We demanded cash from cable operators and yanked signals in four markets until, eventually, the disputes were resolved.

The scenario at KAYU sounds eerily similar, right down to the rhetoric. Brian Brady, president of Northwest Broadcasting Corp., which owns KAYU, said the cable operator he's battling "puts no value on over-the-air broadcasting."

That's about right. During our fight, our COO, Duane Lammers, (who, along with President/CEO Perry Sook, was the architect of Nexstar's...

Read the rest of this article with a Free Trial at HighBeam Research.

Premium Content Partnership | HighBeam Research provides an in-depth online archive library of reference works.