PROVIDENCE – LIN TV Corp. and Atlanta-based Cox Communications today announced an agreement for retransmission of broadcast content from LIN’s local stations in both analog and high-definition formats. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, though both companies expressed their satisfaction with the deal.
“Our stations are leaders in their markets and we’ve made substantial investments to bring our viewers high definition digital programming,” said Vincent L. Sadusky, president and chief executive officer of LIN TV Corp. The agreement reflects fair value to both parties.”
“We are happy that we finally reached an agreement,” said Leigh Ann Woisard, a Cox spokeswoman. The companies have been negotiating for about two years, she said, starting in Rhode Island but then involving other LIN TV and Cox operations nationwide.
“At the end of the day,” Woisard said, “we wanted to make sure we reached a deal that minimized the impact on our cable pricing for customers.”
The deal will bring programming from LIN TV stations including WNAC Fox and WPRI CBS in Providence, WWLP NBC in Springfield, Mass., and WTNH-TV (ABC) and WCTX-TV (MyNetworkTV) in Hartford-New Haven, Conn., to thousands of Cox viewers.
It also grants Cox the right to use LIN TV’s local content for Video on Demand, and will bring a new “Local Weather Station” to viewers in Hartford and on Florida’s Gulf Coast.
LIN TV Corp. (NYSE: TVL) owns and operates 31 television stations in 18 mid-sized markets. Additional information is available at www.lintv.com.
Cox Communications, a wholly owned subsidiary of Fortune 500 company Cox Enterprises, is a broadband communications and entertainment company with more than 6 million customers. Additional information is available at www.cox.com.
