Cablevision and News Corp. are still feuding over transmission fees, a situation that has left millions of Cablevision customers in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania without Fox programming, like, oh, football games, the ALDS baseball games, Glee, House, The O'Reilly Factor and Good Day, New York since October 16. And given the current tenor of "negotiations," it seems that these lowly customers may miss the World Series. Well, unless they decide to (illegally) watch Fox programs online—the media company claims that when a Fox employee with Cablevision service called Cablevision, the Cablevision rep told them which websites streamed Fox shows!
According to the Daily News, the Fox employee taped his conversation:
"Is there anyplace I can get these games?" the Long Island-based customer asks.
The rep first suggests the customer try adjusting his HD set, which would allow him to legally get the Fox signal over the air.
The rep then goes on to give out two websites where the customer might find the events. The sites do not have the right to broadcast games.
"You can watch them online," the rep says. "You know about that?"
"They pretty much have all the games," he says, repeating the site URL. "This is one I got in an email from here.
"Thank God for the Internet, right?" the rep says.
Asked by the caller where the sites came from, the rep says: "We have millions of people calling about these channels. We have a team that's like online trying to find things online for free. So they send us these emails."
Cablevision EVP of communications Charles Schueler said “The FCC filing clearly demonstrates that News Corp. has acted in bad faith and outlines the FCC’s authority to order binding arbitration and immediately end the Fox blackout of Cablevision customers. News Corp. never engaged in real negotiations, they only made a 'take it or leave it' proposal for Fox 5, and they timed the Fox blackout to leverage major national sporting events to force Cablevision to accept unreasonable demands."
However, News Corp. said, "From the genesis of our talks with Cablevision, Fox has negotiated in good faith. We have never made any ‘take it or leave it’ demands, nor are we asking for $150 million in fees. For Cablevision to still be making those claims is yet another example of their ploy to secure an advantage through government intervention." MediaDecoder also reports, "News Corporation’s charge that in a personal meeting, the Cablevision president, James Dolan, made clear to the News Corporation president, Chase Carey, that 'Cablevision’s preferred path was to continue to seek political or regulatory relief,' rather than a negotiated settlement."
