City of Yuma demanding credit for Spectrum customers

Subscribers of Charter Spectrum cable in Yuma have been without local coverage of NBC and CBS since last Friday. Now the city is demanding that Spectrum provide a credit to those customers.

The stations are owned by Blackhawk Broadcasting and operated by the News-Press and Gazette Company, owner of KECY-TV.

On February 1st, Spectrum dropped KYMA and KSWT from its cable lineup without warning. According to reporting in the Yuma Sun, the assistant city attorney sent Spectrum a letter accusing the cable company of breaching its license with the city and failing to provide subscribers with at least 30-days notice that their service might be affected.

The 30-days is required so consumers have time to decide if they want to keep their coverage. According to the Sun, Spectrum didn’t notify customers until 5:03 p.m. last Friday and the city received notice only an hour-and-a-half earlier.

“According to the terms of the most recent agreement which was sign I don’t believe it’s even more than a year or so old…. We believe that the way they handled the situation by pulling the two channels off the air, plus the local channel … channel two… That they were running locally on cable, which was a local channel. We believe that those could be in violation of the franchise agreement,” said public affairs coordinator for the city of Yuma Dave Nash.

According to the city’s contract, Spectrum subscribers will receive a credit for having their service substantially affected.

In addition, the city expects to collect $864 dollars for each day the cable provider blacks out KYMA and KSWT.

When the sun reached out to Spectrum, a spokesman said they would be declining comment on the letter. But added that they wouldn’t carry the signals without the station’s consent.

In the meantime, KYMA and KSWT programming remains available over the air with an antenna. You can also watch our newscasts live on KYMA.com and the O lympics are on the NBC sports app.