contract talks between cable giant
Charter Communications and NBCUniversal hit an impasse Thursday. If the two companies fail to hammer out a new carriage deal before the current pact expires this weekend, it could lead to a blackout of NBC channels for Charter customers.
An outage of NBC channels, including local broadcast station KNBC-TV Channel 4, would affect more than 1.6 million homes in the Los Angeles region that subscribe to Charter’s Spectrum cable TV service. Charter is the largest pay-TV company in Southern California.
The current contract expires Jan. 1. If no deal is reached by then, Charter would not have the authority to distribute NBC channels.
A blackout could prevent
NFL football fans from watching Sunday’s highly anticipated contest between the Green Bay Packers and
Detroit Lions on NBC’s “Sunday Night Football.” NBC also would pull its other networks, including Telemundo, USA, Bravo, Syfy, E! and MSNBC, from Spectrum systems.
Time Warner Cable. Charter took over Time Warner Cable’s systems earlier this year and rebranded the service as Spectrum.
