WHDH-TV owner Edmund Ansin is refusing to back down and accept defeat in his company's lawsuit against Comcast for the loss of its NBC affiliation.
WHDH-TV owner Edmund Ansin is refusing to back down and accept defeat in his company's lawsuit against Comcast for the loss of its NBC affiliation.
WHDH is suing Comcast, the parent company of NBC, after the network announced plans to end its affiliate relationship with WHDH as of January 2017, and move that affiliation to a new television station that they will own.
In May, a federal court judge granted Comcast’s motion to dismiss that lawsuit saying “WHDH’s loss of the NBC affiliation is no doubt a blow to the station’s profitability. But absent any actionable harm attributable to Comcast, it is simply an indurate consequence of doing business in a competitive and unsentimental market place."
We believe the judge got it all wrong, so we are reviewing our options for an appeal.
Edmund Ansin, WHDH Owner
WHDH filed a notice of appeal with the federal court on Wednesday.
“We believe the judge got it all wrong, so we are reviewing our options for an appeal” said Ansin in a statement.
In a statement, NBC said, “We were pleased with last month’s decision by the court to dismiss the case.”
Ansin plans to operate the station as an independent if all else fails, and increase local news coverage.
Although the biggest concern, WHDH is not the only one of Ansin's stations about to possibly lose its network affiliation. The CW affiliation for WHDH sister-station WLVI-TV is also in question as its affiliation agreement expires at the end of August.
It is speculated the CBS, which owns half of the CW network with Warner Brothers, will choose to move the affiliation to its owned station WSBK-TV which is currently a MyNetworkTV affiliate. A representative of WBZ/WSBK declined to comment on the matter.
If this happens, Ansin will own two independent stations in Boston which will both have drastically decreased in value due to affiliation losses.
