Frontier drops KATU amid spat over fees

Portland – Frontier Communications stopped carrying Portland’s ABC affiliate Saturday evening amid a dispute over how much Frontier should pay for rights to broadcast the channel.

KATU’s owner, Sinclair Broadcast Group, negotiates annually over what Frontier must pay to carry Sinclair’s channels. The two sides say they have been unable to reach a deal this year, so KATU dropped off Frontier’s service.

Frontier offers cable service in parts of Clark County, including Camas and Washougal.

KATU remains available over-the-air for homes with a TV antenna, though reception quality diminishes.

Frontier also dropped other channels, including the Tennis Channel and Reelz. Additionally, two digital channels KATU broadcasts in Portland — MeTV and Comet — also fell off Frontier’s system.

Frontier apparently dropped Sinclair channels in other markets, too, including the Seattle area, where Sinclair operates the ABC affiliate KOMO.

The telecommunications company issued a statement faulting Sinclair for the outage, claiming that Sinclair sought too much money for its programming and wanted Frontier to “include channels that our customers do not want.”

Last month, KATU issued its own statement on the dispute with Frontier, defending its position in the negotiations.

“Given that (KATU) spends millions of dollars each year to buy and produce high-quality programming, it is only right and fair that Frontier Communications compensate us fairly for a portion of our cost, especially since they are reselling our content to their subscribers,” KATU said.