Fox, Time Warner Cable Continue Talks After Deal Ends

[Joanne98]

Source: Bloomberg


Jan. 1 (Bloomberg) -- News Corp.’s Fox network kept its programming on Time Warner Cable Inc. as the companies worked to resolve a fee dispute, extending talks past a Dec. 31 deadline.

The companies agreed to a “short extension,” Time Warner Cable spokesman Alex Dudley said today in a statement. Fox had threatened to turn off its signal if the two parties couldn’t reach a deal, which would prevent Time Warner Cable subscribers from watching some New Year’s Day football games.

A blackout would affect about 6 million cable subscribers in cities including New York, Los Angeles, Orlando and Austin. Fox, whose profit declined 54 percent in its fiscal first quarter, loses advertising revenue if the programs go off the air, said Matthew Harrigan of Wunderlich Securities.

“It’s mutually assured destruction if they don’t reach an agreement,” the Denver-based analyst said in an interview before the deadline. “The networks can’t really afford to pull their signal because then they shoot themselves with the advertising and conversely the other cable companies get hit by their customers.”

Time Warner Cable also is negotiating on behalf of Bright House Networks, the seventh-largest U.S. cable operator. The closely held company, with two headquarters in Orlando and in Syracuse, New York, has more than 2 million subscribers, according to its Web site.

Time Warner Cable dropped 44 cents, or 1.1 percent, to $41.39 on Dec. 31 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. New York-based News Corp. fell 22 cents to $13.69 on the Nasdaq Stock Market.


Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aDm90oc6I3aM&pos=3

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We need media reform! The "too big to fail" for-profit model is too corrupt!

A La Carte for cable. I only need about 10 channels. This rest of it is garbage I shouldn't have to pay for!

[bemildred]

1. So Fox blinked?

It's such fun watching these blowhards haggle over money.

[Vinnie From Indy]

2. Screw both of them!

I gave up Time-Warner cable years ago. I was simply tired of paying for the lies and propaganda. Between our local library's awesome selection of DVDs and the internet, I found that I do not miss cable at all.

[Javaman]

6. Exactly. Two vile corporations trying to play the public.

This whole mess was contrived from the beginning.

Were they both trying the old, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", tactic?

In the end, faux will still be on the air and time warner will charge higher prices. and we the public will be, as usual, fucked.

[abelenkpe]

9. I don't think it will really go down that way this time

I'm sure you're right this is what they will attempt, but in this economy I think you'll find many people will not be able to afford extra money for cable since they are already paying extra fees for credit, phone, banking, etc.
They will look for alternatives like HD antennas, or dish, or viewing on the internet and ditching cable altogether.

[no_hypocrisy]

3. Fox has the option of changing its programming to something it CAN afford.

No need for ALL cable subscribers to subsidize Fox and its profits.

[Joe Bacon]

4. Dear FCC: Please let us pick and choose what channels we want on cable!

Give us the right to choose which channels we want to subscribe to AND which channels we don't want. I'd like to drop all Fox and Jesus channels from my cable package.

[lazarus]

17. the problem with a la carte

is that the more popular channels subsidize the less popular channels. So if we go a la carte, we'll lose a lot of niche channels.

[Raine]

19. Yup, I was in favor of a la carte until

someone brought that up to me, now I see it's not such a good idea.

[Bette Noir]

5. Time Warner pulled ABC for a couple of days, about 9 years ago iirc.

It got hit with a whopping-huge fine from the FCC for breaking its contract with all its subscribers.

I dropped Time Warner when it pulled Turner Classics out of my package without warning. A lot of people did.

[abelenkpe]

8. TCM

is one of the very few channels I would want to keep. I would have done the same!

[BumRushDaShow]

7. This idiot business model of "growing a business"

has backfired across the board for so many industries including the media. The insistence that "customers want" (and thus must have) 800 fractional niche channels and thus must pay for that privilege, is pure nonsense and is finally coming to destroy them in the end. The overhead to maintain the dozens of channels that each outlet creates or buys, far outweighs the income derived from viewers and advertisers. They have been in complete denial that cannibalizing their own audiences could never pay off in the end.

In this faux quest to offer "choice", they have been forced to reduce the quality to keep the costs down, and this results in an increase in the transient audiences that they are seeing. So then rather than improve the quality but reduce the amount, they go for freak programming to attempt to garner eyeballs, and the whole thing spirals downwards into an abyss. And the insistence on 24/7 programming has made what was once dubbed a vast wasteland in the past, look like an oasis compared to what is out there today.

Maybe it's time to go back to dawn to dusk stations and stop filling hours and hours with crap and "paid programming" and other nonsense.

[high density]

10. It's bad

Not only do we have these crazy content creator/owners making a thousand channels we don't want, then we have the cable companies demanding that paying subscribers also rent a device so we can decrypt the content they're sending to us. We have to watch it through that box unless the FCC has said otherwise (i.e. for over the air channels).

I go on Time Warner's "roll over or get tough" website and it tells me to watch Fox over the air or the individual shows on the internet and to connect my computer to my TV! I'll have to save a copy of this page for when they're talking about how they need to enforce bandwidth quotas on their internet service, I've got a nice document showing that online video is a service they have recommended in the past. In the past the cable companies have been vehemently against online video because it obviously cuts into their overpriced 'on demand' PPV service.

[dballance]

11. It's All Posturing

Just like the analyst said Faux is not going to let itself loose 6 million customers. The companies paying for advertising would go nuts about that. They've probably already worked out a deal in which TW will pass the cost on to the subscribers and are just doing this propaganda so TW can tell is customers it tried so hard to keep FOX under control so TW didn't have to raise prices. Hell, TW will probably raise prices beyond what's required to pay FOX and blame it on FOX.

[dreyer]

12. Greasy Murdock plot

I'm not sure, but it may be that that greasy Rupert Murdock wants to get the Time Warner cable subscribers to switch to DirecTV, which he now owns (if I'm correct). So he figures on winning either way, either the evil Fox network gets more money, or the evil DirecTV gets (some, because the have competition from Dish and Maybe there are other cable providers also in these populated areas) part of the people who may leave Time Warner. I sure hope some of these tricks from these Repukes that have been cheating, robbing, and murdering over the last 18 years or so (largely including the two stolen elections for the monkey bush), start to backfire and they finally get there comeuppance for their crimes.

[totodeinhere]

15. Wrong.

Murdock does not own Directv. John Malone's Liberty Media group does.

Nobody involved has clean hands. Time Warner cable is just as greedy as Murdock is.

As far as I'm concerned, the FCC should get involved and mandate an ala carte model under which subscribers can pick and choose what channels they want to pay for. So if I want Fox programming, I can choose to pay for that, or if I don't want it I can dump it. And if I don't want to have twenty different shopping channels on Directv, I shouldn't have that forced on me either.

Another thing they should do is stop greedy broadcaster from taking up half of their broadcast days with worthless infomercials. Sometimes when I scroll through the channels I get at least half of all of the channels are running infomercials. And I am paying $90 a month for this? It's ridiculous.

[iandhr]

13. If they do not get FOX back on

before the NFL playoffs people will be pissed

[totodeinhere]

16. I'd love to see it.

Then maybe people could do something besides plopping down in front of their TV sets watching footballs games all day. And if you do watch a pro football game, over half of the time is taken up with commercials. Talk about corporate greed.

[BlueIdaho]

14. Anything that cuts revenues to Fox and Murdock works for me. nt.

[Name removed]

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