City Makes Last-Minute Agreement To Keep WGEM
UPDATE (10:00 am Wednesday)
In a special session of the Kahoka Board of Aldermen held Wednesday, December 31, the board agreed to continue rebroadcasting WGEM on Kahoka’s Cable system, and to pay a fee for the service.
The previous story was:
No Agreement With WGEM
Kahoka cable customers will have to celebrate the New Year without watching WGEM Channel 10, unless a last minute deal is reached.
The city has until December 31 to reach an agreement with WGEM for retransmission rights. At their December 8 meeting, the Kahoka Board of Aldermen unanimously voted against any agreement with WGEM that would require the city to pay for the rebroadcast rights.
WGEM is seeking subscriber fees from Kahoka CATV customers to continue to air their signal on the city-owned cable system WGEM is requesting approximately $3800 annually for the rights.
“Our company decided that compensation would be a part of all carriage agreements for program providers in each of the markets for our 12 television stations. We’d love to provide the service, but we have too many deals with too many systems, and to single out Kahoka not to pay would be unfair to them,” WGEM Vice President and General Manager Carlos Fernandez said.
