‘We’re At War’: CBS Pulled From Major Markets After Big Dispute With Time Warner Cable
If you’re a Time Warner Customer, you may have noticed that CBS and its corporate cable cousins are no longer available to watch on your TV. After a big dispute between the media conglomerate and the cable provider over programming fees, negotiations broke down and CBS was pulled from Time Warner Cable in major media markets, as well as cable channels under the CBS umbrella, such as Showtime.
According to The Wall Street Journal, up to three million people are expected to be hit by the network blackout. Since it’s the summer, there aren’t many shows airing new episodes, but watchers of Under The Dome or Big Brother, as well as Showtime hits Dexter and Ray Donovan will not be happy with this news.
Time Warner Cable has accused CBS of demanding fees in certain big cities much higher than what the cable operator pays in other areas of the country. CBS had said that Time Warner Cable was refusing to negotiate deals at parity to what other cable, satellite and telecom companies had struck with CBS.
The dispute highlights growing tensions between TV channel owners and distributors. Pay-TV operators have argued that the fees demanded by broadcast networks, known as “retransmission fees,” are increasing their programming costs. Those fees have become increasingly important to broadcasters such as CBS, which has said it expects retransmission revenue to roughly quadruple to $1 billion a year by 2017, helping diversify broadcasters’ revenue away from a heavy reliance on advertising.
The blackout started around 5 P.M. on Friday, though it was expected to happen sooner owing to a late night negotiation on Tuesday that didn’t end well. How bad was it? CBS CEO Les Moonves declared, “We’re at war with Time Warner Cable.”
The TVSpy blog grabbed a picture of what Time Warner customers are seeing when they switch to CBS.
Last year there was a similar dispute between DISH Network and cable network AMC, home to Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead, which led to AMC being taken off DISH in the summer, only to get resolved in October.
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