Mediacom customers will no longer have access to KOMU/Channel 8 programming as a result of the two party’s inability to reach a compensation agreement.
“Saturday Night Live,” “The Office,” “Gossip Girl” and “The Biggest Loser” are among the NBC and Mid-Missouri’s CW programs that are no longer available to Mediacom subscribers. However, Mediacom’s On Demand service still carries several NBC programs, and others can be viewed online.
Since July, the two have been debating whether to renew a retransmission consent agreement that allows Mediacom subscribers to view KOMU content. KOMU argued it should be receiving financial compensation from Mediacom, but Mediacom argued it is KOMU’s duty to continue broadcasting to serve the public interest.
Friday, the two parties came to terms on the first year of the three-year contract, but negotiations on years two and three stalled Monday.
“KOMU appreciates our loyal viewers,” KOMU 8 General Manager Marty Siddall said in a news release. “Although our good faith efforts have been rebuffed thus far, we will continue to seek an acceptable agreement.”
Mediacom spokeswoman Phyllis Peters said the one-year agreement KOMU attempted to reach is very rare and could be inconvenient for customers.
“Every time you raise the bar and only set the term of the contract to one year, you guarantee you’ll come back to the table and to a higher bar in just 12 months,” Peters said. “If we’re ever really trying to put a lid on escalating prices, it’s far better to have a three-year deal in place.”
KOMU Director of Audience Development Matt Garrett said this request is nothing unfamiliar to KOMU, or any television station for that matter.
“We have this type of agreement with every other cable and satellite provider in the area, and quite frankly, all television stations across the United States have these types of agreements with cable and satellite providers,” Garrett said.
For the past two years, Mediacom has provided KOMU with services such as free promotions on other channels and a fiber-optic line that transmitted broadcasting from the KOMU station to Mediacom’s offices. With the new contract, KOMU was seeking less than 2 cents a day per subscriber.
“They’re looking for money, essentially,” said Tom Larsen, Mediacom group vice president of legal and public affairs. “Our business philosophy is that we have to create programming packages that our customers want and we need to make them affordable.”
Mediacom said on [its website](http://mediacomcable.com/KOMU.html) KOMU is owned by MU, and is therefore a non-profit and tax-supported entity. KOMU disagrees on [its website](http://www.komu.com/freetv/), contending it is a self-sufficient auxiliary enterprise of MU.
Regardless of the decision, change was inevitable for the area’s 30,000 Mediacom subscribers. They faced either a raise in prices or the removal of KOMU, Larsen said.
Mediacom subscriber Diane Bongard is upset with the final decision. She said she plans to spend Tuesday morning contacting Mediacom and possibly searching for a different cable provider. KOMU suggests looking into DirectTV, Dish Network and CenturyLink, but Mediacom’s countering by compensating customers with free digital cable boxes for a year.
“Each day I do not have NBC programming I should be compensated,” Bongard said. “When I signed up for Mediacom, I was given a cost for a certain number of channels and now I have less. It’s pure mathematics to me.”
After speaking with the Columbia office, Peters said numerous customers have come in Tuesday and expressed their excitement with the free digital boxes they received.
Peters said the channels previously occupied with KOMU and its affiliates will likely be replaced with alternative family-friendly programming.
“We’re looking for solutions here, not barriers,” Peters said.
