Town of Webb Supervisor Ted Riehle received the following letter that was forwarded by Susan M. Eckhardt, executive assistant for franchising of Time Warner Cable due to his inquiry on the recent blocking of ABC News Syracuse affiliate NewsChannel 9 from the local viewing line up.
The letter was generated by a repre–sentative from News-Channel 9 WSYR.
We have received several questions from Time Warner Cable subscribers in the Old Forge area who are no longer able to watch NewsChannel 9 on that cable system.
Thank you for your outreach concerning the loss of WSYR on Time Warner’s cable system in your community.
All TV stations operate in a DMA or Designated Market Area. DMA’s are determined by The Nielsen Company. For Syracuse TV stations the DMA includes the counties of Onondaga, Oswego, Madison, Oneida West, Cayuga, Cortland, Tompkins and Seneca. Unfortunately, your community falls outside of our DMA counties.
WSYR’s removal from the Time Warner cable systems outside of our DMA is because of ABC’s decision to restrict cable carriage within our DMA.
The change is being made at this time because WSYR just entered into a new agreement with Time Warner and we and Time Warner are now required to comply the ABC obligations.
Although we regret this change in order for WSYR to keep providing ABC programming within the Syracuse DMA, we were required to comply.
However, you can keep up with all of the news, weather and sports that are important to the Syracuse community on our website, www.LocalSYR.com, which is available to you online 24/7.
