Retrans battles: Tricky finding out where to watch the game

Tom Paine

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The dispute between NBC and Charter Communications over retrans fees meant Charter subs (including Time Warner Cable's) might not be able to see tonight's Green Bay-Detroit game, which looked like it might be a very big game (although it turned out to be not quite so important after this afternoon's Giants-Redskins game).

So Packer and Lion fans thought they had dodged a bullet when NBC announced on New Year's Eve that it would hold of on its threat to pull the network from Charter systems for an indefinite period of time while negotiations continued.

But for some the problems remained. For example, patrons of an Asheville, NC restaurant (including some diehard Packer fans) expecting to watch the Packers-Lions game found it was not being carried in that market on DirecTV,  the restaurant's system, because of a retrans battle between Hearst (which owns the NBC affiliate in the market) and DirecTV. Though of course it was still available on Charter systems in the area.