News Corp. Channels Remain Blacked Out On Cablevision

Will Cablevision customers be able to watch this circus?

The fight over transmission fees between News Corp. and Cablevision has entered day three, with News Corp. continuing the blackout of its channels, including WNYW 5 and WWOR 9. Which meant Cablevision customers were out of luck when trying to watch yesterday's (football) Giants' win or (baseball) Giants' loss. The two sides are supposed to resume talks today, but in a late afternoon statement, Cablevision's executive vice president of communications Charles Schueler said, "The longer this shameful News Corp. blackout of the NFL and Major League Baseball continues, the more obvious it becomes to everyone, including political leaders of both parties, that binding arbitration is the fastest and fairest way to return Fox programming to Cablevision customers."

According to Cablevision, News Corp. is demanding a huge increase in fees—$150 million up from $70 million. An analyst said last week, "Fox is laser-focused on capturing significant retrans dollars and we see no reason why they would give in," noting, "The fact that Fox holds the rights to air local sports programming, like the Giants and New York Yankees games, gives them leverage over Cablevision." News Corp. may be privately relieved the ALCS is on TBS, or else there would be a real uprising from Cablevision customers!

News Corp. issued a statement yesterday, "The parties had several discussions again today but no material progress, was made and we continue to remain far apart. However, both sides agreed to continue talking tomorrow [Monday]."

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By Jen Chung in News on October 18, 2010 9:32 AM

Comments [rss]

Jesus Lopez

I recommend DISH Network, I just see why pay for cable when you can't get all your channels. I have and work at DISH, and as a customer I know that they offer more value for you money. Right now DISH is offering HD free for life to all customers and plus, new customers can get up to three HD receivers for free.

BotanistPrime

A $40 powered antenna is all you need to get free HD over-the-air Fox/other networks. My picture actually looks better than my friends who pay for stupid TimeWarner.

spiritross

I hate James Dolan

Maybe he'll go bankrupt and sell the Knicks

It's called rabbit ears.

Hook them up and you get free HD TV.

When it comes to Cable TV, the question you have to ask yourself is:

Why pay for something that wastes your time?

soopahgrover

Hey, guess what... Fox 5 is a broadcast channel, and you can get it over the air!

If it doesn't come in where you live, you have no one to blame but Fox! Do call them to complain.

Srsly. I don't know the particulars of this case, but the way Fox has been whining all over creation about it, I bet they're trying to extort Cablevision for an unfair amount of money. Cablevision does Fox a service by bringing their programming and paid advertisements to more viewers. Why should they pay Fox a large sum for doing them a favor?

soxinthecity

It's a shame they didn't pull Fox News off the air.

jibbly

BTW, cablevision won't let it's customers watch Fox shows on Hulu!

http://gizmodo.com/5665721/news-corp-bans-cablevision-customers-from-watching-hulu

For fucks sake...

Mr. Shankly

You should be able to get around this with Tor or a proxy.

thisisnotacure

From the article: "[T]he new twist is that News Corp. is using their stake in Hulu to ban Cablevision Internet users from accessing FOX content on Hulu as well."

Fox pulled the content from Hulu for Cablevision customers, not the other way around.

You're right, though...it's still a dick move on the part of Fox (not that we should expect anything less from them.)

jibbly

My mistake. It's hard to tell two assholes apart sometimes!

thisisnotacure

So true!

Mordicai

Maybe today is a good day for Cablevision customers to figure out how BitTorrent works!

eitan

Wake me up when Comedy Central and Cartoon Network have problems.

Petey

I really hate cablevision, and blame this in this dispute, as well as the one with ABC.

Mr Mel

News Corp and Cablevision, they deserve each other.

jibbly

Ugh, it's the ABC bullshit all over again. I had to pull out the ol' bunny ear antenna to get channel 5, but 9's signal is too weak in my apartment.

But you know what? Seeing how good HD broadcast looks like makes me almost want to stop paying $50+/month for Top Chef and House marathons on Bravo.

schadenfreudian mensch

Yea, I don't know why you want to pay $50+/month when you could do OTA HD Broadcast and then just get netflix unless you can't live without live sports.

jibbly

You're right. I could probably live without cable but there are members of my household that would scream bloody murder if I took away their cable shows.

On top of Netflix streaming (which is awesome) if Hulu was just as cheap to get on the TV I'd take a long hard look at that monthly cablevision bill.

As for live sports, I don't need to pay for the privilege of watching the Mets and Knicks lose in real time.