A received a call last week from my WSI sales rep. He was calling at the direct request of the company president in response to my concerns regarding the WSI/Time Warner joint venture.
In case you missed it: the two companies will provide local weather (talent included) on Time Warner cable systems throughout the country. Hit the button marked "weather" on your remote, and you'll automatically be transported to the Time Warner/WSI local weather channel.
Anyway, I told him my concerns were not to be interpreted as official company (Sinclair) policy. But, why should we be sending money each month to WSI only to have WSI take viewers (and money) from us with their own weather channel?
And here's the kicker: one of his responses was, "Well, Steve, if it's not WSI who does this with Time Warner, you know it will be somebody else."
That's fine. If it's Accu-Weather or Kavouras or Weather Central, I really don't care. I'm not sending them a check each month for data and service.
I suppose WSI has considered the ramifications of ruffling the feathers of some of their customers who feel as strongly as I. And, I suppose WSI has decided that the possible down side of losing some clients over this does not cloud the landscape nearly enough to turn away big bucks from Time Warner.