retrans wars

ABC Back On Cablevision As Talks Go On

Cablevision and ABC are negotiating a deal Monday that tentatively ended a dispute over fees and restored millions of viewers' access to the Academy Awards telecast in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut shortly after the broadcast began Sunday night.
By
Associated Press,

NEW YORK (AP) -- Cablevision and ABC were negotiating a deal Monday that tentatively ended a dispute over fees and restored millions of viewers' access to the Academy Awards telecast in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut shortly after the broadcast began.

The two sides, who had been hammering at each other for days in the media, said a deal had been reached Sunday night, nearly 15 minutes into the Oscar awards broadcast.

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Neither side released details about the deal, and it was unclear how permanent it would be.

Rebecca Campbell, president and general manager of WABC-TV, said the companies had "reached an agreement in principle."

"Given this movement, we're pleased to announce that ABC7 will return to Cablevision households while we work to complete our negotiations," she said in a statement.

Cablevision Systems Corp. spokesman Charles Schueler welcomed ABC's programming back to the cable operator's lineup and seemed to praise the deal.

"It is a deal that is fair to our customers and in line with our other programming agreements," he said.

A stalemate in the dispute had led ABC's parent company, the Walt Disney Co., to pull its programming from the cable operator's subscribers at midnight Saturday. The move, which imperiled viewers' access to the highly rated Oscar show broadcast, marked the first time in a decade that a major broadcast station went dark in a dispute with a cable company.

The signal was switched on at 8:43 p.m. Sunday, Cablevision said. The awards show began at 8:30 p.m.

Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger was seen in the Oscar audience, about a minute after Cablevision announced it had reached a deal to get the telecast on the air.

The cable operator's subscribers had been scrambling to hook up antennas or find live TV on the Internet to watch the Academy Awards after the signal was switched off.

The companies traded blame for the stalemate ahead of one of the most-watched nights of television.

"Cablevision has once again betrayed its subscribers," said Disney spokeswoman Charissa Gilmore. "Cablevision pocketed almost $8 billion last year, and now customers aren't getting what they pay for ... again."

The dispute is another example of how networks are struggling to find profits as advertising revenue dwindles and programming costs grow. Networks are transmitted freely over the airwaves, but expensive event programming has led the companies behind them to increasingly demand fees from cable TV and satellite operators for retransmitting those signals.

Cablevision had argued that Disney was seeking an additional $40 million a year in new fees, even though the company pays more than $200 million a year to Disney.

Disney countered that Cablevision charges customers $18 per month for basic broadcast signals but does not pass on any payment for ABC to Disney.

The dispute is similar to a standoff at the end of last year between News Corp. and Time Warner Cable over how much Fox television station signals were worth. That tussle, which threatened the college football bowl season and new episodes of "The Simpsons," was resolved without a signal interruption.

Cablevision also feuded with Scripps Networks Interactive Inc. in a January dispute that temporarily forced the Food Network and HGTV off the service. Neither side provided terms of an agreement that restored the channels after three weeks.

Disney was asking Cablevision to pay about $1 per subscriber per month, the same amount that News Corp. demanded from Time Warner in their dispute. Some analysts think News Corp. eventually accepted about 50 cents per subscriber.

Derek Baine, a senior analyst at SNL Kagan, said that if all four networks charged $1, that would total $4 a month in new fees. Most cable companies couldn't absorb that cost increase and would have a hard time passing them onto consumers, he said.

"That's a lot of money," Baine said. "They're just playing chicken here."

Disney's previous contract with Cablevision expired more than two years ago, but it was extended month by month as talks continued. Under previous arrangements, Disney gave away its ABC broadcast signal for free, a situation that most broadcasters are now trying to change.

WABC-TV is the most-watched TV station in the country, said Disney, which is based in Burbank, Calif.

Contributing to this report were AP Business Writer Ryan Nakashima in Los Angeles and Associated Press writers Cristian Salazar in New York and Christopher S. Rugaber in Washington, D.C.

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Comments (5) -

dalonepunman Nickname posted a year ago
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Most folks have seemed to forgotten that when Cable first came on the scene, they promised "...commercial free programming..." as one of the panaceas to allow them into the communities and into your homes...a piped-piper's tune that worked for Satellite services too. Then the Cable folks saw that getting into the "time sales" angle of advertising would add an additional source of revenue and blacked their bottom lines, they dove into the same markets that the OTA folks were using for their bread and butter. All of this going on at the same time they were not compensating the OTA folks for the signals they were providing. And some of the OTA folks had even split the cost, or compensated the Cable folks for getting their signals on those systems when they first started up. Now, you have Mega-Corporations that supply programming (i.e.: Disney-FOX-GE/CableWhatever(NBC)-WhoEverOwnesCBSThisWeek...) going against the MegaCable-Liths and the Boobermint is suppose to run to one or the other Company's aid and smack the other down? And in the meantime, it's still the smaller OTA groups fighting against both the MegaCable-Liths that still strong-arm the OTAs in to giving their market share of advertisers away via-lower-than-cost ad-rates and substandard production and their own Parent-Affiliation that is NOW demanding that they too should be getting additional from the OTAs' market-only negotiated compensation with those same MegaCable-Liths? The only way OTAs are still going to be viable is for the American Consumer to go out and pay for an OTA Antenna, rip up their Cable and Satellite bills, get off their fat @55es and live with that fact that OTA will be the only thing free 'til the Obama Administration finally puts a Overly-Regulated bite into the Free OTA Television Industry's neck. Then the consumer will be left with nothing but commercials, no local-anything (except boobermint-approved EASs) and a monthly bill for the priviledge of tuning into pablum from Cable/NetProgs that will be occasionally spiced with a sporting/social-event...just enough to keep anyone interested and out of their local Boobermint-Representatives' office. How's that for a Business Plan?
ZumaHans Nickname posted a year ago
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OTA signals were proved irrelevant in NYC. From today's LA Times: Mason Woodford, a sales associate at a Radio Shack in Patchogue on Long Island, said the store's phone had been ringing off the hook all day. "People keep calling and asking, 'Do you have anything that can help me get Channel 7?" he said. His store had just three digital antennas Sunday, and it quickly sold out. "They're normally not in demand," he said.
Thomas Scanlan posted a year ago
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My comments here relate only to those portions of cable and satellite systems devoted to actual television stations; not cable's carriage of the ESPN's, CNN's, Movie Channels, yadda yadda yadda.....When cable first started in CO, WY, PA, NY and other rural areas, it was a simple matter of charging customers for TV signals that were difficult or impossible to get with an antenna. Stations didn't pay cable systems, and vice versa. Early must carry was equally simple. Grade B over the headend, you got carried. Then came the 55 mile rule, and eventually the current must carry/consent alternatives, and cash started changing hands. it has now reached the point where the giants of the industry are BOTH, and I stress, BOTH so greedy for the last buck, on BOTH sides, that everyone, in the long run, loses a little in the equation and everyone pays unnecessarily higher fees. Cable customers write bigger and bigger monthly checks, part of which goes to traditional 'free' programming, i.e., WABC-TV's signal from NYC. As long as these fees escalate and both sides participate, we'll see artificially high costs of operation passed on to advertisers, cable and satellite customers. At some point over-the-air 100% advertiser supported TV just might become more appealing, eh?
FreeTV4USA Nickname posted a year ago
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SAVE FREE TV!
LouieArmstrong Nickname posted a year ago
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Let's face it, get back to the old rabbit ears and the rooftop antenna! We're paying through the nose for this network garbage that we don't even watch. I ask somebody, anybody to tell me that they actually watch ABC-TV or FOX. Do those two garbage networks still have ANYBODY watching them? Man, let's pull out the XM or Sirius radios, men. At least their fees are understandable and reasonable. This network trash isn't.

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