A feud between Equity Media Holdings and Luken Communications left RTN off the air for close to four hours on Sunday morning. The spat came after a breakdown in an extension of an agreement on the use of Equity’s automated system to uplink customized local schedules to RTN’s 80+ affiliates.
After failing to come to an agreement, Luken officials decided to move master control operations from Little Rock, Ark. to Chattanooga, Tenn, therefore knocking the network off the air Sunday morning. Because of other issues of need to iron out, all RTN stations will be running the same satellite-fed schedule, at least for the time being.
However, Equity-owned stations (WPXS-TV in Mt. Vernon, IL, serving the St. Louis market and WNGS-TV in Buffalo) have dropped the RTN network entirely.
Equity owned RTN but it was sold to shareholder Henry Luken last spring. Equity recently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection – the same day Tribune filed for theirs.
Retro Television currently carries a lineup of classic TV shows mostly from NBC Universal’s library and formerly carried programming from CBS’ library. But a dispute with CBS over unpaid debt led them to pull its show from the channel last summer.
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Until yesterday, an on-screen message concerning the Retro Television Network appeared on WKRG-TV’s digital sub-channel (5-3) in Mobile, Alabama. There is currently no programming at all. The station had just started running promotions for the network around the beginning of the new year after the digital sub-channel went on the air with a tone and some station identification on November 10th, 2008, followed by network programming on the next day.
Yesterday, WKRG-TV aired a promotional advertisement for RTN and the digital sub-channel, but I have not yet heard anyone from the station mention the current situation with the network.
Fron another board, the chief engineer at affilate KWWL Waterloo, IA said that midday Saturday, he was informed that they may get cut off and was given the coodinates to the national feed. There are no station id tags, but RTN is running one that says My Retro TV at the top of the hour. They recently added KWWL (7.3) to our cable and I have been enjoying the programming.