After nearly two weeks of negotiations, a bid to restore a nonprofit Chicago public television’s station’s programming to a Milwaukee cable company’s lineup has reached an impasse.

Negotiations between Time Warner Cable and WTTW (Channel 11) have broken down with the nonprofit TV station saying the cable giant wanted too much money. Cable officials contend WTTW turned down Time Warner’s offer to bring back some of the shows not already duplicated on Milwaukee public television stations. Bandwidth, not money is the issue, they said.

Time Warner dropped WTTW from its cable offerings more than two months ago saying that many of the programs the Chicago station had were already offered by Milwaukee public TV stations. Time Warner officials have also said the public TV stations in Milwaukee, not Chicago, serve the Kenosha area.

However, WTTW has thousands of subscribers in southern Wisconsin including Kenosha, Racine and Walworth counties and many of them lodged complaints with Time Warner demanding a return of the Chicago station’s programming not seen on the Milwaukee stations. The complaints have also compelled state legislators, the Kenosha City Council and the County Board, and the governing boards of other municipalities to put pressure on Time Warner.

“We’ve had discussions, with (Time Warner) offering to put a couple of shows on their Video On Demand. We had told them we’d be willing to be on digital cable and they had agreed to explore that option, too,” said Dan Soles, WTTW’s vice president of programming. “They came back to us at first and said there might be some indemnification issues — involving copyright and other issues. But then they got back to us and we were stunned to see how much they were asking.”

Soles said the dollar amount to be reinstated on digital cable was in the “five-figure range,” but declined to disclose the actual amount. Nevertheless, it was not something a nonprofit organization could afford, especially in a bad economy, according to Soles.

“This was a significant amount. Right now they don’t charge anything to the other (commercial) Chicago stations,” he said.

Soles said WTTW countered with what it felt was more reasonable for their budget with a dollar amount “in the four-figure range.”

Stacy Zaja, Time Warner’s spokeswoman in Milwaukee, said she could not discuss any costs being negotiated.

She said WTTW rejected the cable company’s offer to restore some of the programming, but only those unique to the Chicago public station. Those programs, such as, “Chicago Tonight,” “Check, Please” and others, would go on the listing for On Demand Channel 411, which would be included for digital cable subscribers. On Demand allows subscribers to access programs at their convenience rather than during a time slot.

“We have offered to do that for them and that’s something they’ve refused to do,” she said Thursday.

Zaja said money wasn’t the issue.

“It doesn’t come down to money. What this comes down to is the bandwidth, or the space needed to launch additional High Definition channels. Our customers have told us that they’re interested in having more HD programming on their lineup,” she said.

WTTW’s former slot has been replaced with Headline News, Zaja said. To make room for that program, Time Warner also dropped a shopping channel.

Soles said WTTW is not giving up and hopes that negotiations can continue. Had negotiations ended on a more positive note, programming would’ve likely returned by the middle of the month.

“We’re going to continue to try and pursue this. We think its time we tell the story, though,” he said. “Nothing would make me happier than to tell viewers that we’re back on the air.”