WINK And WFTV Will Not Be Dropped
By DOUG CARMAN

SEBRING — Avon Park residents will not miss the Miami Dolphins games. Sebring area cable subscribers can still catch “Wheel of Fortune” at 7 p.m.

Channels 11 and 9 are safe ... at least for now.

Making the announcement at Tuesday’s City Council meeting in Sebring, Comcast Area Vice President Rod Dagenais said that the cable company has, for the indefinite future, yielded to public demand, putting off any plan to remove the two channels.

“After all of the letters we received from our customers, and after talking to some of you since we met last… we decided not to drop the channels at this point in time,” Dagenais told the council, adding that Comcast never formally told their customers they would be dropping the channels.

Dagenais did state however that Comcast may need to reclaim the channels later on, but for now, there are no plans to do so.

Customers throughout Highlands County expressed concern that the two channels were going to be lost. WINK is the only channel in the area that carries the Miami Dolphins football games as well as “Wheel of Fortune,” although WTSP airs “Wheel of Fortune” at a different time.

WINK is carried countywide. WFTV is not carried in the Lake Placid area.

Dagenais also said that there was no limited capacity issue with the network, contrary to his statement in December, and he apologized for the “confusion.”

“I may have made it sound like we had a capacity issue on our fiber optics ... that certainly isn’t the case,” Dagenais said. “We have plenty of capacity.”

At a Dec. 5, 2006 meeting before the Council, Dagenais suggested that Comcast was considering the removal of the two channels after they finished acquiring the digital signals from Tampa. CBS affiliate WINK, Channel 11 out of Fort Myers, and ABC affiliate WFTV, Channel 9 out of Orlando, were to be dropped.  WTSP, Tampa’s CBS affiliate on Channel 10, would have replaced Channel 11.

WTSP will still be launched in Highlands County at a later time, but Comcast had no definite date on it.

Channel 9’s reception on Comcast continues to be problematic. Dagenais said this is because the channel broadcasts from the northeast end of Orange County, while Comcast’s reception center is in Lake Wales.

Outside of the meeting, Dagenais said Wednesday that WFTV was cooperating with Comcast to solve this issue and he was hoping it would be solved within 30 days.