Valley cable providers to drop WNEP

http://www.mcall.com/business/mc-wnep-dropped-cable-20121218,0,4616305.story FROM THE MORNING CALL For years, cable television subscribers in the Lehigh Valley have been able to see news broadcasts from the Scranton and Wilkes-Barre region on WNEP Channel 16. But that will end in January when both Service Electric and RCN stop carrying the station. The change should help boost the audience of WPVI Channel 6 in Philadelphia, the Valley's designated ABC affiliate. Currently, both WPVI and WNEP provide ABC programming to Lehigh Valley cable subscribers. The result is that some Lehigh Valley television viewers are seeing programs on WNEP instead of WPVI, which can reduce the size of the WPVI audience and affect the rates it charges advertisers for air time. At issue are arrangements regarding which stations serve specific markets. The Lehigh Valley is part of the Philadelphia designated market area, for which WPVI is the ABC affiliate. WNEP is the ABC affiliate in the much smaller Scranton and Wilkes-Barre region, which has about 590,000 homes. Most of the programming between the two stations is duplicative, with local news being the primary exception.