Hearst Television has only one full power television station in the Orlando-Daytona Beach-Melbourne DMA, but in combination with a low power station, the company offers a lot of programming to the market. It is working on a new retransmission contract with cable carrier Cox Communications. Deadline: September 1, 2011.
The main station is WESH-TV, the local NBC affiliate operating on high-VHF Channel 11, spun out to the world on its heritage virtual Channel 2 out of Daytona Beach.
The station is warning its viewers of potential loss of the channel over the Cox platform if a deal is not reached by the deadline, and reassured them that the channel will still be available off-air and on competing MVPD platforms.
In addition to NBC, WESH carries MeTV, short for Memorable Entertainment Television, on a digital side channel. The channel features classic comedies, dramas, and even classic commercials that first aired between the 1950s and 1980s.
WKCF-LP is also involved in the negotiations. It carries three services – CW network programming, another retro network – This TV – and Hispanic network Estrella TV.
Hearst only recently added MeTV, using it to replace weather programming originally carried on the WESH side channel.
