Fox and Cablevision did not reach an agreement on the amount Cablevision would pay to the media supplier, so fans in New York and New Jersey who subscribe to Cablevision did not see Game 1 of the NLCS.
On Saturday night, Cablevision accused News Corp. of making “outrageous fee demands” for the right to carry the Fox stations. The company says it already pays News Corp $70 million per year for programming and that the network wants $150 million for 12 Fox stations.
“It is shameful for News Corp. to use Major League Baseball and NFL games to hold viewers hostage in order to extract tens of millions from Cablevision customers,” the cable company said in a statement Saturday night.
It strikes me that Cablevision doesn’t have much leverage here. Seventy million dollars sounds like a drop in the bucket to Fox. Taking Fox off the system just gives customers who like football and baseball more reasons to move to DirecTV, where they can buy both MLB Extra Innings and NFL Sunday Ticket. Or, just put up an antenna and get the World Series and Sunday NFL for free over the air.
As an individual provider, I would agree with you that Cablevision doesn’t have much ground to stand on. However, Fox is also currently using these tactics with Dish Network, where they threaten to pull all Fox feeds on 11/1. I’m sure Fox will use the same tactics with other providers when those contracts are up. I’m beginning to wonder whether this hedges on antitrust behavior, as I feel Fox really just wants to push everyone over to DirecTV. Some (non-Fox employed) lawyer can set me straight on that though.
@Matt Mitchell: I suspect that since TBS carries half the playoffs, and the Fox signal for the NFL and MLB post-season games are free over the air, there’s not much of an anti-trust argument to make. It strikes me that Fox is doing what a union does when it strikes for higher wages.
Cable and satellite are mostly doomed, however, as broadband allows us to watch entertainment when we want. There are a number of shows I just buy from Amazon, and then watch at my leisure. I can by the MLB Extra innings package for my Roku and watch almost every game except locals, and in some cases I can pay extra to watch those. There is a Vermont company that won a federal grant to build out broadband to the state, and they plan on offering ala carte channels, rather than packages. In other words, there’s plenty of competition.