Our TV Translators will have Channel 2 on March 1st

I was watching KUTV (Channel 2) a few nights ago when I saw what's officially known as “a crawl” on the upper part of the screen. It was a message saying that DirecTV customers were likely to stop receiving KUTV starting March 1^st. Why? Because Sinclair Broadcast Group (the company that owns KUTV and dozens of other TV stations in the U.S.) is having trouble negotiating a new deal with the folks at DirecTV. Their current agreement ends on February 28^th.

According to Scott Pierce of the Salt Lake Tribute: “What it boils down to is, of course, money. Cable and satellite companies have to pay for local broadcast signals; Sinclair wants DirecTV to pay more to rebroadcast its stations than DirecTV thinks those stations are worth.”

Salt Lake Tribune Feb 18, 2013

This has happened before. In fact, just last year a similar dispute threatened to take KUTV off of Dish Network. In that case, a last -minute deal was struck (and I mean that KUTV was literally just hours away from being dropped before the parties reached a deal). Dish Network and DirecTV have had similar battles with major, Hollywood companies too, causing viewers to lose channels like AMC, MTV, Comedy Central, etc. In most cases, if these disputes really cause a channel to be dropped then it takes a few days or a few weeks before things are settled and the channels come back. But the viewer is ultimately a powerless bystander who's dragged into someone else's trouble.

The “crawl” I saw on KUTV this week implied that the folks at DirecTV were the bad guys and they gave out a telephone number that viewers could use to flood DirecTV's switchboard with complaints. I suspect that if I were watching DirecTV I'd be seeing similar messages, inserted by DirecTV, encouraging customers to call KUTV and/or Sinclair Broadcast Group to call and complain because, of course, Sinclair's folks are the bad guys. As a viewer, I'm disappointed and a little bit shocked at the lack of professionalism on display. As a viewer, I'd expect these people to work out their differences months before these deadlines approach. I'd expect that nobody would threaten me with a lack of service (and right before the NCAA "March Madness" begins!). I'd never expect to be asked to choose sides and flood someone's switchboard. After all, how many average viewers have any idea how these entities make deals? How many of us even know what kinds of deals they make?

At this moment, as I write this blog posting, I have no idea whether there will be another last-minute deal to keep KUTV on the air for DirecTV customers. I expect the deadline to pass without a deal, however, and for the companies to make a lot of noise and point fingers while KUTV is unavailable. Then, within a month, I expect KUTV to return as part of a two-year agreement. Then, in 2015, I expect the same thing to play out again. Meanwhile, the deal with Dish Network will be up for renewal, so there will be an entirely separate sideshow for that service too.

The good news for me, however, is that I use an antenna to receive KUTV programming over-the-air in Ogden Valley. And there are no plans to drop KUTV from our over-the-air translator system... ever! You, too, can get KUTV and more than 20 other stations without any monthly subscription fee using a TV antenna and a modern, Digital TV tuner. If you have a fairly new Digital TV then you're in good shape. If you bought one of those Digital TV converters for your older TV then, also, you're in good shape. If you have a clear “line of sight” from your house to the TV Translator towers above Wolf Creek and your antenna is properly set up, you'll be able to receive all of our translator channels for years to come!