Back in July, Hearst Television pulled its television stations from Time Warner Cable systems in several cities across the country, including Louisville and Cincinnati.
To compensate its viewers for the loss, Time Warner Cable dutifully "imported" replacements from Nexstar Broadcasting, including Terre Haute's WTWO-NBC 2 for the NBC viewing public in Cincinnati, and WROC-TV from Rochester, N.Y. for Louisville CBS viewers, and those viewers were, by and large, placated.
Nexstar, on the other hand, was livid. The broadcast company filed a lawsuit against Time Warner Cable claiming breach of contract, copyright infringement, and that the cable company had slapped its grandmother. (OK, so I made that last one up, but Nexstar's lawyers did throw a pickup truck load of accusations out there.)
Now a Texas judge has told Nexstar that, in effect, Time Warner Cable has the right to use its stations anywhere it wants to. "Nowhere in the [agreement] does Nexstar limit its retransmission consent," wrote Judge Jorge Solis in his order. "While the geographically limiting language, 'located in the Television Market of a Station,' is present, it is not contained in the section addressing retransmission consent; rather, it appears when discussing Time Warner's carriage obligations..."
In other words, while Nexstar should have been smart enough to include in the section where it belonged, the company didn't, so, sayeth the judge, "Therefore, the [agreement] does not limit Time Warner's ability to retransmit the signals to any particular region."
Nexstar's court case against the cable company will continue, although it will not receive any temporary injunctive relief as it awaits further action. In Judge Solis' opinion, Nexstar doesn't stand to win that case when or if it continues.
I'll keep you posted.
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