Tribune owns KTVI (Channel 2) and KPLR (Channel 11) in St. Louis, among other stations locally and nationally, and has been withholding them from Charter-owned Spectrum cable since Jan. 3 as part of a squabble over how much Tribune wants to be paid for the channels. Both sides are blaming the other for the situation.
Normally about 4,000-5,000 customers would be expected to access it, the source said, and this time it was 25,000-30,000. Because a subscription to a service that carries Fox Sports is supposed to be needed to connect to the digital feed, and Spectrum has been locked out, this evidently means there were a lot of people borrowing passwords from friends or relatives who have another service.