Stalemate continues for Channel 4 and Time Warner; cable company can't carry Bills game, CBS shows
Channels 4, 23 owner rejects Time Warner
Thousands of Bills fans lined up at four locations today to get free "rabbit ear" antennae so they can watch the Buffalo Bills-Arizona Cardinals game tomorrow.
A fee dispute between Time Warner Cable, which serves most of the region, and the owner of Channel 4, which airs the game, means that the game will not be available for most area residents who have cable.
But because the game can be picked up on a local television set if it has antennae, the cable company is offering them free at its four local offices. Fans started lining up at 9 a.m. on Maple Road in Amherst for the antennae.
By 1:30 p.m., the line was more than a quarter mile long, two and three people deep.
"This is the Bills. They are winning. People love it, and they will do anything to get the game on television," said Mike Hill, a 20-year-old North Tonawanda resident at the end of the line.
A Time Warner representative at the site said the company distributed 13,000 rabbit ears on Friday, estimates it will give out 9,000 more today and had plans to offer another 10,000 tomorrow morning.
A cable company representative told people in line that the company hoped to resolve the problem by kickoff for the 4 p.m. game time tomorrow.
According to Time Warner, the antennae will be available from 2 p.m. until 6 p.m. today at four of the cable company's business locations.
The locations are: 972 Maple Road, Amherst; 355 Chicago St., Buffalo; 4066 N. Buffalo St., Orchard Park; and 789 Indian Church Road, West Seneca.
Other cable customers may simply show up with a pizza, a six-pack and a desperate smile at the home of a friend who has satellite.
The owner of Channels 4 and 23 — LIN Television — cut off its feed to Time Warner Cable early Friday morning.
The move came after the midnight deadline Thursday when LIN couldn’t reach a national agreement with the cable giant to keep the Western New York stations, along with others across the country, on the air.
LIN, which owns the local CBS and CW affiliates, wants to be compensated by Time Warner for allowing it to carry the stations. Time Warner believes it shouldn’t pay for channels that are available over the air for free.
The fight isn’t just between Channel 4 and 23 and Time Warner. Ten other markets are affected by the tiff.
Negotiations were still under way today.
Both sides of this battle have been working overtime in Buffalo trying to paint the other side as the bad guy who is going to take away the Bills.
Channel 4 has been leading its news broadcasts with stories about its battle with the cable giant. The top story at 5 p.m. Friday featured a Time Warner Cable customer whose wife “freaked out” over the possibility of not being able to see the Bills Sunday and scrambling to subscribe to the DISH Network.
WIVB-TV’s Web site featured ads from the DISH Network that urged: “Don’t let Time Warner take away your favorite show!” as well as Verizon Fios, bragging “Cable Doesn’t Stand a Chance.”
There’s also now a toll free number to teach Channel 4 fans “about your television choices.”
Time Warner Cable in Western New York, for its part, has plastered on its Web site’s home page: “LIN TV has pulled WIVB and WLNO from your cable lineup. They want you to make up for falling ratings and advertising revenue.”
The Web site also offers a video with instructions on how to hook up your computer to your television monitor using their broadband connection. It tries to make it look easy, but it’ll no doubt have many people shaking their heads over an alphabet soup of special cables and inputs and outputs to make it happen. (Or you can try this method from eHow.
The cable company is using its antenna giveaway to underscore that the programming it is being asked to pay for is available for free over the airwaves.
In the meantime, Time Warner has replaced CBS programming normally carried on Channel 4 with the CBS College Sports Network. Channel 23 has been replaced with HBO Family.
This means that if Time Warner customers click on Channel 4 at 4 p.m. Sunday hoping for the Bills game, they instead will be treated to the second half of an NCAA women’s volleyball game between Tulane and the University of Alabama at Birmingham, followed by an encore airing of the MaxPreps Lemming Report, billed as “the only national weekly high school football recruiting show.”
Among the other top-rated CBS shows that viewers may miss are the "CSIs," "The Amazing Race" and "60 Minutes," "NCIS" and "Survivor."
apergament@buffnews.com and mbecker@buffnews.com
