FOX vs. Cable

[Satellite Rick]

Television Dispute Still at Stalemate
By RYAN NAKASHIMA
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: Thursday, December 31, 2009 at 1:26 a.m.
Last Modified: Thursday, December 31, 2009 at 1:26 a.m.

LOS ANGELES | As a midnight deadline approaches, Time Warner Cable offered an olive branch that could leave the Fox network and some of its cable TV channels on the lineup for millions of subscribers - for now. But an executive at Fox owner News Corp. indicated a signal interruption was likely.

Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt said Wednesday the cable TV operator will agree to binding arbitration and any interim steps necessary to keep Fox channels on while talks continue.
"Consumers should not be held hostage during these negotiations. That's just wrong," Britt said in an interview Wednesday.
But in a note to employees Wednesday, News Corp. Chief Operating Officer Chase Carey said temporarily extending the current terms past Thursday would "simply extend the period of time that Time Warner profits from our marquee programming without fairly compensating Fox for it."
He also rejected arbitration as a possibility in a letter to Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who had pleaded for both sides to agree to uninterrupted television for football fans "through the college bowl season."
If a new deal isn't reached, programs that could disappear from Time Warner Cable Inc.'s lineup include "The Simpsons" and several football games - among them, the Sugar Bowl on Friday, the Cotton Bowl on Saturday and the NFL's final regular season contests on Sunday. Bright House Networks' cable TV systems also face a Thursday deadline with News Corp.
In Florida, two television viewers filed a lawsuit Wednesday against News Corp., seeking an injunction to ensure that the Fox broadcast of the Florida-Cincinnati Sugar Bowl contest would remain on Bright House's cable system. Circuit Judge Maura Smith in Orlando did not immediately rule.
Time Warner Cable has more than 13 million TV subscribers and Bright House has more than 2 million, though their dispute involving the Fox network only concerns 14 Fox-owned stations covering such markets as Los Angeles, New York, Dallas-Fort Worth and Austin, Texas and Tampa Bay-St. Petersburg and Orlando.
Besides the Fox broadcast network, six cable channels - FX, Speed, Fuel, Fox Reality, Fox Soccer and Fox Sports en Espanol - and certain regional sports networks were also up for negotiations throughout the Time Warner Cable and Bright House service territories. Unaffected are Fox News, Fox Business Network and National Geographic, which is partially owned by News Corp. Those three are covered by deals that aren't expiring yet.
Separately, TV station owners are also negotiating deals with several cable systems around the country. About 650,000 subscribers of cable TV through Mediacom Communications Corp. in markets as large as Des Moines and Cedar Rapids, Iowa, are also in jeopardy of losing Fox and CBS broadcast signals as a fee dispute with Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. nears a midnight Thursday deadline.
Many of these disputes get resolved at the last minute with no disruption of service. Last year, Viacom Inc. threatened to pull Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and other channels from Time Warner Cable but the two reached a last-minute deal.
The last time a major broadcaster went dark on a cable TV operator was when The Walt Disney Co. asked Time Warner to pull signals from its 10 ABC stations in May 2000 in a fee dispute. Time Warner took the signal off for a day before succumbing to pressure and agreeing to an extension.

[jcarrera]

You know, we (the public) can never, ever know who is "the bad guy" in a situation like this. I do know that FNC is a major draw of eyeballs and that should command a premium. But FNC is not part of this problem, so I just don't know who is being more unreasonable--probably both are...BHN want to pay as little as possible (good for us who eventually pay for it), and NewsCorp wants to get as much as possible.

Kind of like a car sale deal...do you view yourself as a "bad guy" for wanting to pay as little as possible? How do you view the car dealer's position? What if you are the car dealer? How do you view yourself? How do you view the customer's positions?

[ediemash]

for a while there i was wondering if we were gonna have to drop bh and get dish, we only have bh because of fnc. we dont need all of those other channel because we got wd media player and 4tb of hard drive connected to it, it has all of our tv shows, movies and hd movies. for cable we only watch fnc if it werent for that we would drop cable and save me a little bundle of cash

[vurbano]

I think TWC is picking a fight with the wrong dog.

[shenanigans_ink]

Fox wants the same deal Viacomm wanted. $1 more per household. Brighthouse is just trying to protect costumer rates.

[vurbano]

Fox wants the same deal Viacomm wanted. $1 more per household. Brighthouse is just trying to protect costumer rates.

You take Fox network and all their cable channels off of any service and it will soon be a dead one.

[jcarrera]

Articles I have read say that FNC and Fox Business are not part of the issue at this time. Those contracts are not yet up for renewal.

[raysgrumpy]

12:20 here in Palm Bay and Fox is still on. It was lose-lose for both of them if they couldn't come to an agreement.

[Tampa8]

I agree, very hard to know who if anyone is being unreasonable. But I have supported Dish efforts in the past on this, so without having the details tend to think Comcast is doing what Dish does, trying to prevent programming price increases. And before someone writes how they all go up in price anyway, yes, but many many other factors out of their control help to cause that, such as energy increases......

[iceturkee]

negotiations continue, third extension just granted lasting until 11am today.