Northland Cable restores channels

Moses Lake customers may receive HD, DVR

MOSES LAKE - After stalled negotiations prompted a Moses Lake television broadcasting company to drop several channels, some returned to the air this week.

Moses Lake-based Northland Cable Television had a contract with Belo Corporation, the parent company of KREM 2, KING 5, Northwest Cable News and KSKN.

"We're required by federal law to have their permission to carry their signals," explained Northland Cable Television Regional Manager Jon Ulrich. "Our contract ran out Dec. 31. We were negotiating with them since October, and those negotiations did not come to a successful conclusion by Dec. 31. We had to take them off the air by law, without their permission."

In the interim, KREM 2, KING 5, Northwest Cable News and KSKN were dropped from the lineup, Northland Marketing Manager Nathan Clark said.

"Since we did not have a contract in place," he said. "We continued to work with Belo."

"We had customers who were upset because they lost the channels, primarily the exclusive programs Belo had as far as Dr. Phil and Oprah," Ulrich said. "Those particular programs were exclusive to Belo, and frankly, we knew that would be an issue. We just didn't have any other choice."

Ulrich said the company apologizes for the short-term notice provided to customers.

"But we were negotiating right up to the deadline in hopes this wouldn't happen in the first place," he said. "We never wanted to take those channels off the air. It's kind of like if you're dealing with union negotiations or whatever else, it's a matter of when the hammer fell."

Northland Cable and Belo were able to successfully reach an agreement to bring back KREM 2 and KING 5. The agreement was signed Monday, and those channels were back on the air the next day.

"This returned that exclusive programming," Clark said. "It did something else; it gave us regional programming for both Seattle and Spokane. One of our large, competitive advantages to carry Seattle programming is other competitors in the area don't do that."

Northwest Cable News has not returned to the company's broadcasting. Clark said the programming was exclusive to and is valued by the company.

"Unfortunately, we don't have an agreement at this time and don't see one occurring in the short term or near future," he said. "But because Northwest Cable News is a Belo channel, it really just draws from their regional television stations. Much of what Northwest Cable News is, is newscasts from KREM 2 and KING 5. So we do still have regional news, weather and sports from both the Seattle market and the Spokane market."

There is no contract with KSKN either, but Ulrich said there is a duplicate channel, KSTW, out of Seattle, with essentially duplicate programming.

Northland Cable Television does not talk about details of negotiations when negotiating with a company, Clark said, but the company's goal is to negotiate with the best of its customers in mind.

"We try to balance the customers' needs for programming with the goal of keeping rates affordable," he said. "We do realize not everybody is well to do and can absorb it, so we do want our rates to remain affordable and competitive."

Northland announced several other agreements, including availability of the Disney Channel, high-definition television and digital video recording service and added Mariners games for the 2008 season in standard and high-definition television.

"We've been working for the last three years diligently to be able to add high-definition; it's very highly requested programming for the customer base," Ulrich said. "That high-definition package will be available to subscribers."

A customer must have a high-definition set and a cable box allowing them to unscramble the high-definition signals, Ulrich explained.

"That box we're providing will have its own internal digital video recorder, or DVR," he said. "That's a new service we haven't offered before. That service will be available to anybody that can get cable TV in the Moses Lake area. It's not available this time in Othello and Ephrata."

The Disney Channel has also been highly requested by customers.

"It's the top-rated children's network in the nation, and we're excited to have them, to be able to provide it for our customers," Clark said.

Northland Cable Television has been in operation since 1984 and has served the Moses Lake area for 10 years.

Find it on your TV

For Northland Cable Television users, KREM is on channel 2, KING is on channel 5 and the Disney Channel is on channel 30.