Dallas Blog

I see little to justify asking Charter to pay for something that all their customers are already capable of receiving for free.

This is part of an overall trend in television. Several television groups have demanded retransmission fees from cable companies. LIN TV (they own several TV station including one in Austin) recently signed a retran agreement with Charter.

The networks used to pay the stations to carry network programming (ABC, CBS, etc). The stations then let cable carry for free. Now the networks don't pay the stations and the stations are asking for money from cable companies (eventually networks will probably want part of the retrans money stations are collecting).

I'm not sure which side (station or cable) is more in right but cable companies are starting to pay local stations retransmission fees. I think there will be several temporary blackouts as stations are dropped from cable systems (these usually seem to get settled in a couple of weeks or so). Big cable companies haven't been paying but DirectTV, Dish, AT&T, Verizon, etc have been paying for the last couple of years. Cable companies just started paying in last year or so.

One of the arguments the cable company has is that programming is available for free on the internet. I wonder if they will use against this on regular cable networks (TNT, A&E, Comedy Central) since some of them make their shows available for free on the internet. I think you can watch almost all of the Comedy Central shows on the net.