Reports: Merrimack TV Station Could be New NBC Affiliate

Boston could be without an NBC affiliate next year if executives at the company get their way and convert a station it owns in Merrimack – WNEU-TV Channel 60 – from Telemundo to NBC programming, according to local and television business press reports.

NBC, which also owns New England Cable News, and other cable stations, has announced that it will be moving its programming away from Sunbeam’s WHDH-TV in Boston when the current agreement expires at the end of the year.

According to New England 1, a website about television news, the problems between Sunbeam and NBC started late last month when the company offered to purchase WHDH-TV for $200 million. Ed Ansin, the owner of the company, reportedly balked at the price, saying the station was worth more – in the $420 to $540 million range. He added that he would be willing to sell the station – along with WLVI-TV 56 – for around $500 million, although he added that he wasn’t really interested in selling the stations – he just wanted to keep the programming.

NBC Owned Stations president Valeri Staab reportedly stated in an email obtained by AdWeek’s TV website, TVSpy, that the Merrimack station would be “a broadcast channel available to over-the-air viewers like our other NBC and Telemundo stations.”

According to broadcasting maps posted on WHDH’s website, the over-the-air broadcast range would reach about 3.2 million people from the northern side of metropolitan Boston to the Lakes Region of New Hampshire. It would lose, however, about another 4 million viewers when compared to WHDH’s stronger coverage in central Massachusetts, north Rhode Island, and the South Shore.

TVSpy reported that if the programming actually moves between stations, it would be one of the biggest affiliate changes in the region in more than two decades. The Boston market – when Manchester and southern New Hampshire, as well as central Massachusetts, are included – is the seventh largest in the nation, with 17 full-power television stations.

Ansin, however, isn’t giving up without a fight, saying that he would be hiring a legal team to fight the programming transfer and also met with U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, D-MA, today about whether or not the change was a violation of a commitment Comcast made to the FCC to preserve free over-the-air programming when it bought NBC Universal.

Ansin told the Boston Globe that a year from now, he believed WHDH-TV would still be offering NBC programming.

“That’s how serious we think the violations are,” he reportedly told the newspaper.

WNEU-TV is currently at 60 on the dial and UHF 34 digitally in the area. It’s one of seven full-power television stations licensed in New Hampshire although its studios are located in Newton, MA, with NECN, and its tower is in Goffstown. There are eight other LP (low-power) television stations in the state.