i.p. news

      The New York Times runs a story about the last minute truce between Disney and Cablevision. Let’s rewind a bit...were these two at war and what was at stake?
    
     Cable providers like CableVision (the 5th largest cable company in the US) have long paid important fees to carry cable-only channels like ESPN and TNT. However, they have resisted against paying fees to networks for retransmitting the signal of their traditional broadcast channels. This situation is increasingly upsetting the networks with the decline of their TV advertising revenues.
    
     The fight between Disney and Cablevision reached a dramatic climax when, early Sunday morning (on ABC’s highest rated day of the year) Disney pulled the signal on its New York WABC station, pressing its case for payments from Cablevision. The dispute prevented three million viewers from watching the beginning of the Oscars until a tentative agreement between the two groups restored the signal at 8:44pm, fourteen minutes after the beginning of the ceremony. It is rare that a network goes as far as actually pulling the plug but it is likely that more similar conflicts will emerge in months to come.
    
     The New York Times explores the economics of a possible deal, stressing that ABC started by asking for up to $1 per subscriber a month for its local signal, though people close to the deal say that was a negotiating maneuver and the target price was closer to 60 cents a subscriber.
    
     The NY Times recounts the nerve wracking stance of Disney, the amazingly aggressive response of Cablevision’s competition (Verizon who mobilized battalion of employees and offered a $75 gift card to any Cablevision customer who was to switch to its own competing FiOS service).
    
     While we do not know the terms of Sunday deal between Disney and Cablevision the question is now whether the parties will manage to come to a long term agreement on an issue that has been haunting US networks since the development of cable in the 1980s and which have multiple implications in terms of telecommunication regulation as well as copyright law.
    
     See Article from the NY Times HERE