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BRIEF: WFLA, Bright House reach agreement
[January 01, 2013]

BRIEF: WFLA, Bright House reach agreement


TAMPA, Jan 01, 2013 (Tampa Tribune - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- -- WFLA, News Channel 8, and Bright House Networks reached an 11th-hour deal tonight that means the station won't disappear from the cable service.



The two had been fighting for weeks over a retransmission deal. The cable company had said that if no deal was reached by 11:59 p.m. today, WFLA would no longer be available to its subscribers.

The two sides reached a tentative agreement late today, Bright House spokesman Joe Durkin said in an interview shortly before 11 p.m.


WFLA had been running messages on much of its programming in recent weeks asking viewers to call Bright House and urge the cable company to keep the station on its lineup. The station made the same argument in longer form on a website, dontdropwfla.com, it had set up during negotiations.

Cable operators typically pay a fee to carry channels and networks. In recent years, such standoffs between stations and cable systems have become common.

"These negotiations go on all the time" but rarely lead to service interruptions, Durkin said.

WFLA and Verizon FiOS went through a similar deadline negotiation last year on a retransmission contract. An agreement was reached two days before the deadline.

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