Ask HDBeat: Is FOX HD carried by Time Warner cable anywhere?
By Ben Drawbaugh 
posted August 10th 2006 3:50PM
posted August 10th 2006 3:50PM
Reader .aCr. writs in to say that he jumped into the HD bandwagon recently and has already discovered it isn't all good. His local Time Warner Cable doesn't offer FOX HD and the NFL season is just around the corner. He wants to know if we've heard any rumors about FOX HD coming to San Antonio (preferably before the NFL kick off) and if Time Warner carries FOX HD in other cities?This is a common question and not always an easy one. You see each cable company has to sign an agreement with each local affiliate in order to make this happen. Some affiliates are owned by large media companies and can refuse to play nice. A perfect example of this is the Sinclair Broadcast Group. Sinclair is a bad word on many HD forums and for good reason. To our knowledge they have not signed one agreement to have their HD channel carried anywhere in the country. At one point they were actually asking cable companies to pay for their HD signal which is unheard of. This is really bad considering they own 56 stations in 36 markets and unfortunately for .aCr. San Antonio is one of those markets.
The only thing people in these markets can do is to setup a OTA antenna to pick up the HD version of these channels.
Does Sinclair have a station in your market and is it carried by your local cable or satellite company?
Rochester has sinclar as the owner of its fox affilate and I have been waiting for years to fox HD on cable. Unfortunatly there hasn;t been any real news on this issue in a long time.
Time Warner Cable here in Raleigh-Durham carries FoxHD. Watched all the games in HD on fox last year.
Big ups for answering my question.
I'll look into the Antenna knowing the two sides aren't playing nice.
.aCr.
Did anyone in San Antonio try the over the air antenna? Did it work? What is your approximate location in the city? Does it look as good as some of the other channel do?
TWC has FOX HD in Charlotte.
Check out antennaweb.org for antenna recomendations (its a little buried, but you can enter your address or zipcode for maps to antennas, and recomendations accordingly).
Also AVSForum.com has a forum for local HDTV reception with detailed threads on every major market.
FOX23 (WXXA) is carried in HD here in Albany, NY on TWC channel 1808.
In Parkersburg, WV there's a small mom & pop cable company that carries 2 Sinclair stations in HD. The other larger operater just signed a new agreement with Sinclair, and rumor has it they're supposed to get the HD feeds also, but nothing yet.
Sinclair are right wing assholes that don't care about their viewers. They only want to promote their political agenda and line their pockets.
Burn in hell Sinclair.
My fault, I thought for sure they were a Sinclair station out here but it's not and it's Clear Channel after all.
KTBC, the Fox affliate in Austin, TX is broadcast on TW in HD.
TWC in NYC/Brooklyn does. Still waiting for the NFL network and espn2 HD. :-/
Sinclair owns the ABC affiliate in the Greensboro NC market and will NOT provide TW with an HD Feed. No superbowl in HD last year. FOX is in HD on our TWC.
Sinclair used to own the CBS station (KOIN) in Portland, Oregon so it wasn't carried on cable and it wasn't the easiest to get a signal from the antenna's either. They sold it last summer and now Comcast carries CBS-HD as well. Of course, I moved to Chapel Hill, NC right before that, and now the WB/CW affiliate is owned by Sinclair, so I can't get that without an antenna (doesn't matter to me, but my girlfriend would really love to record Gilmore Girls to the DVR automatically).
WLUK-TV11, the FOX affiliate in Green Bay/Appleton Wisconsin not only refuses to let our local Time Warner Cable system carry FoxHD, but put a lengthy FAQ on their website, claiming THEY would be the victims by not getting paid to allow TWC to carry the HD signal! It's a very interesting read, especially passages like the following:
"It is customary for cable companies to compensate cable channel providers for their signal. The Weather Channel, ESPN, USA, Bravo, Cartoon Network, Lifetime, FX, CNN, Discovery, and virtually every other channel is compensated by the cable companies for their programming. ESPN receives over $2.00 per month per household. Cable companies refuse to compensate broadcasters for their signals even though cable subscribers watch FOX 11, CBS, NBC and ABC almost 70% of the time."
Read the rest here --> http://www.wluk.com/faq/
This was formerly an Emmis station, and from what I've heard on message boards, this is their standard M.O. They have since been bought by LIN Television, and while I don't know LIN's corporate response on the issue, I have a feeling the higher-ups in station management are still drinking the Emmis kool-aid.
To add insult to injury, their OTA digital signal comes in lousy at the last two places I've lived.
The local Fox affiliate in Seattle (KCPQ) is in HD on Comcast, but not on Dish or (I think) DirecTV. The problem is that Tribune, which owns KCPQ, also wants Dish to carry KMYQ, another station they own here that is going to be part of the new MyNetworkTV. And Dish ain't gonna do it; they've been in a standoff since May 1. An attorney from Tribune suggested I switch to Comcast and that they were being wronged by Dish b/c Dish wouldn't carry their crappy station in HD. Blah.
#13,
I've read the same argument as well. The huge flaw in that argument is that the broadcast networks were given this spectrum of airspace that, on the open market, would sell for billions upon billions. Cable companies aren't given that, so they get to charge. I imagine if you point this out to the station, they'll have a bad excuse for it. This is why all TV must move to digital, to free up that spectrum to auction it off this time.
Another solution for greedy companies like Sinclair is to simply stop watching thier stations. I for one don't bother watching any of teh standard def stations that also have an HD feed. If the HD feed is available but not carried, I don't watch it. When their viewership declines, they'll be more motivated to work together...
TWC here in Milwaukee, WI carries Fox HD. I do not know for how long, but I got it when I switched over to TWC back in January of this year.
What we do NOT get in Milwaukee on TWC is the NFL network in HD! I have been bugging them about it for 6 months. They say they are in negotiations. We also do not get ESPN2 in HD.
KTBC in Austin is a Fox owned and operated station. It's HD signal is carred on Time Warner Cable as mentioned above.
#13 - if LIN bought your station, don't hold your breath waiting for them to come to an agreement with the cable company. New England has been waiting for Fox and ABC HD (in RI & CT respectively) for years, both of which are LIN stations.
Here in Portland Maine, Time Warner carries FOX HD on channel 507. Although the deal included a clause that says the local FOX can't produce an over the air HD signal for a year after the agreement began, pretty lame. The Sinclair station is CBS so we have to go over the air for CBS HD. Time Warner and frankly most of the large cable companies do a disservice to their customers, pretty sad there is no way to demolish that monopoly.
Cox has a good selection of HD in Las Vegas. But we have never had the WB in HD because of Sinclair. Now the CW and MyNetworkTV will get no HD coverage on Cox in Las Vegas since they will both be on Sinclair stations.
I seriously doubt that any local affialate would sign an agreement that forbids them from broadcasting over the air in HD in exchange for carriage on a cable system.
According to their website their also on Adelphia in HD. They probably just don't have the infrastucture in place to broadcast OTA in HD yet. Their website says they won't until 2009.
Here in Greensboro, NC Time Warner Cable and Sinclair (WXLV) are in a dispute so that we do not receive ABC HD programming which includes numerous sporting events. Sinclair wants payment for the HD signal and TWC refuses, stating that they don't pay for any other network HD feeds. Both parties in this dispute can go to hell.
Sinclair Broadcasting owns the FOX and ABC affiliate in Columbus, Ohio and will not permit Time Warner to carry their HDTV signal. I've tried the FCC and they are no help. Maybe if enough viewers boycott their stations & advertisers it will hit Sinclair's bottom line, which is the only thing that appears to matter to them.