South Lake Tahoe fights cable company to get news from California’s KCRA
On June 5, when cable TV subscribers of South Lake Tahoe turned to channel 3, they saw the familiar logo of KCRA news and heard information about state politics, traffic, weather, wildfire updates.
The next day, when they turned to that same channel, KCRA was gone.
On June 6, the cable provider Charter Communications stopped giving South Lake Tahoe residents programming from KCRA-3. The city, right on the edge of the California-Nevada border, is in the Neilsen-designated Reno media market. Now South Lake Tahoe residents get their local news from Reno-based channels.
“It’s kind of crazy,” said Shelley Piscitelli, a South Lake Tahoe resident. “We live in California, and we can’t have any local news? We depend on KCRA, for those of us that travel up and down Highway 50. They do the best reporting in our area. We’d have no election information, because we live in California. How can we make a good judgment on voting without the information coming to us?”
In a survey conducted by El Dorado County — the county South Lake Tahoe is a part of — 95% of residents said they wanted KCRA to be made available again, and 77% of respondents said they were considering dropping the cable company.
On Aug. 21, the city of South Lake Tahoe, along with El Dorado County, sent a letter to Lisa Ludovici, the director of government affairs at Charter Communications, about the removal of KCRA news. In the letter, officials ask Charter Communications to petition the Federal Communications Commission to modify the television market South Lake Tahoe resides in, so residents can start watching KCRA.
“There is no rational reason to prevent cable subscribers in the South Shore of Lake Tahoe, CA, from receiving emergency information, news, weather and other content from the highest-rated Northern California news station and offer them only out-of-state content,” the letter read.
According to FCC regulations, the only entities that can file market modification petitions are commercial broadcast TV stations and cable providers, which is why the city has to ask Charter to file a petition for them. For the FCC to approve the request, the petition must demonstrate that the city is part of KCRA’s market.
“We are reviewing that letter and will be responding to the city in the near future,” said Bret Picciolo, senior director in the communications department of Charter.
According to Piscitelli, Charter Communications has stopped providing KCRA in the past. Around 2010, she said, the company stopped providing the KCRA but resumed the service after city residents and officials sent letters to the company urging for the news station to be returned to their televisions.
According to David Jinkens, a South Lake Tahoe resident, if the company doesn’t respond “very soon,” he and other residents are considering a boycott of the cable provider.
But Piscitelli said that there aren’t a lot of other options — most other cable providers also don’t provide KCRA because of the media market issue.
“The big issue is the demographic area,” Piscitelli said.
Some South Lake Tahoe residents are hoping that in the future, their city can be considered part of California — at least, in terms of media markets.
“We’re Californians,” Jenkins said. “At least — I think we’re still in California.”
This story was originally published September 7, 2018 at 3:39 PM.