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Not another TV channel dispute! This time, it’s DirecTV

March 24th, 2010, 5:31 pm by

Spotted: A small number of DirecTV customers could lose ABC and CBS if the companies don’t sign a new contract by March 31.

While this only affects DirecTV customers in Des Moines and Davenport, Iowa, publicizing such disputes is becoming more common and could impact paid-TV service nationwide, including in Orange County.

Local ABC and CBS affiliates apparently could yank the broadcasts if an agreement isn’t reached. Says Derek Chang, executive vice president of Programming for DIRECTV:

“DIRECTV’s contract with the Citadel-owned ABC station in Des Moines, Iowa, and the CBS station in Davenport, Iowa, is expiring on March 31. We have been negotiating in good faith to try and reach a resolution and will continue to do so. If an agreement is not reached by the deadline, we intend to continue to provide the stations as we have for many years, unless Citadel demands that we take them away from our customers. If the stations come down after the deadline, make no mistake, it will be solely and completely the station owner’s (Citadel’s) decision to take the channels away from our customers.”

While this doesn’t affect Orange County customers directly, it is a trend reverberating throughout the paid-TV industry. Channels that cable and satellite companies didn’t pay for previously are now asking for a per-subscriber fee.

TV viewers also wind up in the middle as each side attempts to win their sympathy by saying the other side wants to pull the channels. This happened here in Orange County over New Years Eve, when Time Warner Cable customers thought they would lose Fox and its collection of TV shows and sporting events. We never lost Fox but on the East Coast, Cablevision customers temporarily lost access to the Oscars when ABC and the cable provider failed to come to an agreement.

While the final agreements are never made public, the possibility that ABC and Fox are now collecting money from previously nonpaying customers is just too tempting a revenue source for other broadcast channels to overlook.

I suspect we’ll continue to see more public disputes, including several that will impact channels here in Orange County.

Past disputes:

Posted in: Video & TV • • • • • | 1 Comment »

FCC wants your 2 cents on how much TV channels should cost

March 19th, 2010, 3:26 pm by

If ads warning that the Fox TV channel could get yanked from service made you anxious, annoyed or even thrilled, the Federal Communications Commission wants to hear from you.

The agency, which regulates the cable and satellite TV industry, began accepting anyone’s comment Friday on what they think about retransmission fees. Such fees are what made Time Warner Cable and Fox launch public campaigns over the holidays. Fox wanted Time Warner to pay a fee for every cable customer who had access to Fox.

This is your chance to let the government know how the fees affect customers: They make our prices go up every year. While you’re at it, you may want to offer your thoughts on paying for TV channels a la carte, or pay for only the ones you want.

Orange County customers ultimately didn’t see any shows pulled as the two sides resolved their differences — in private. But not so lucky were Cablevision customers on the East Coast who already this year lost access (temporarily) to Food Networks and ABC.

Time Warner — joined by Dish Network, DirecTV, Cablevision and 11 others — led the way last week when it told the FCC the method for negotiating a fair price for TV channels needed an update. It told the FCC:

Consumers are increasingly being put in the middle of disputes between programmers and distributors, including recurring threats of going dark, high-stakes public negotiations, and, in the case of ABC’s recent withdrawal of programming from three million Cablevision subscribers, highly disruptive blackouts. … The 14 petitioners asked the FCC to implement new dispute resolution mechanisms –such as compulsory arbitration or an expert tribunal — and require continued carriage of broadcast signals during negotiations or disputes, to help ensure uninterrupted programming for consumers. The petitioners implore the FCC to act expeditiously to help prevent further consumer harm.

The FCC is accepting public comments through May 4. Anyone can file a comment. Here’s how to do it: Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in: Video & TV • • • • • • | 30 Comments »

Versus is back on DirecTV

March 15th, 2010, 3:15 pm by

Good news for DirecTV sports fans: The satellite TV service is bringing back VERSUS, a sports channel that viewers lost last summer when owner Comcast and DirecTV failed to come to an agreement. As with these sorts of deals, details were disclosed.

The channel, known for bull riding, hockey and college football, returns today, DirecTV announced. It will resume where it left off in August. It remains in the same TV plan offered to customers.

Read DirecTV’s official announcement HERE.

Related Versus posts:

Posted in: Video & TV • • • • • | 6 Comments »

Enough with the fees! TV providers team up to fix rising TV prices

March 12th, 2010, 2:28 pm by

Corrected, 3:50 p.m.: Apologies to Phillip Swann for mispelling his name. Also, I incorrectly said Comcast is buying CBS. Comcast is interested in NBC, as I’ve previously reported (sigh).

CATCHING UP: Time Warner Cable led a group on Tuesday asking the government to fix the rising price of TV service.

Well, sort of. The issue wasn’t about a customer’s rising bill but over “retransmission fees,” which TV channels charge to TV providers that want to retransmit the channel to customers. The TV services, of course, blame the fees for pushing up a customer’s monthly bill.

On Thursday, U.S. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski appeared to have listened. During an Senate committee meeting, Genachowski talked about the retransmission issues and said that the ”framework that is in place … may have lost pace with changes in the marketplace,” reports the L.A. Times.

These retrans fees gets renegotiated every year or so and pretty much always go up. Here is one estimated list of how much a TV customer ends up paying for each channel.

But disputes over retrans fees have left some cable customers wondering if they’ll be staring at a blank TV screen. We here in Orange County felt this over the holidays when Fox threatened to take away channels from Time Warner customers. The fee fight was resolved with no disruption in TV service.

But last weekend, Cablevision customers on the East Coast missed the first 30 minutes of the Oscars because the cable company didn’t come to an agreement in time with Walt Disney-owned ABC. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in: Video & TV • • • • • • • | 8 Comments »

Another example of why TV prices go up: Cablevision vs. Disney

March 2nd, 2010, 10:14 am by

Noted: TV prices seem to go up every year for all sorts of reasons. But the biggest reason, say the TV providers, is that they themselves face price hikes for the right to broadcast TV shows.

We saw this here in Orange County over the holidays between Time Warner Cable and Fox. Now, it’s happening on the East Coast, between Cablevision and the local ABC channel.

Cablevision’s 3 million customers learned of the dispute Monday during “The Bachelor,” according to the New York Post.  ABC, a Walt Disney Co.-owned network, also launched  SaveABC7.com. Disney is threatening to cut Cablevision off from the Oscars if an agreement isn’t reached by Sunday.

But this dispute isn’t just about Disney wanting more money from Cablevision. Disney just wants money, apparently. It previously didn’t charge a cent to Cablevision for the right to broadcast ABC, which is free to all TV viewers with a good antenna.

Cablevision, like most other cable companies, charges customers about $18 for that basic broadcast package of regularly free over-the-air channels (read my earlier story to see what Time Warner charges for basic broadcast TV at “Minimum Time Warner Cable bill: $8.50/month“).

This is the same tussle that Fox and Time Warner Cable had in December. News Corp., which owns Fox, wanted to be paid for the channel that had previously been free and reportedly demanded $1 per month for every Time Warner customer. Fox, which could use more money to fund TV shows, said it had a right to the money that Time Warner charged customers for something the cable company received for free. The two ultimately settled. Since neither side will speak, it appears that Time Warner caved.

Analysts guessed Time Warner ended up paying Fox between 50 to 75 cents per customer, or $6 to $9 more per year. Time Warner customers will most likely find out how much the company really paid when it hikes rates for 2011.

How much does ABC want from Cablevision? Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in: Video & TV • • • • • | 6 Comments »

Time Warner strikes deal with Food Network

January 27th, 2010, 3:38 pm by

Time Warner Cable signWhew! Time Warner Cable announced that it has signed a ‘multi-year’ deal to keep Food Network TV on its roster for paying customers.

It was reportedly a tough negotiation as the contract between the two companies had expired Dec. 31, 2009. No details of the new agreement were disclosed.

The deal also includes a new multi-year contract with Great American Country, a channel also owned by Scripps Networks Interactive.

At least Time Warner  subscribers didn’t have to go through the loss of any food shows as customers of Cablevision did when Scripps failed to reach an agreement with that East Coast cable provider before their contract expired. Cablevision customers spent 21 days without the Food channel.

Recent news about Time Warner Cable:

Posted in: Video & TV • • • • • • • | 2 Comments »

Time Warner Cable could lose 30 channels

January 22nd, 2010, 12:01 am by

Time Warner Cable photo, courtesy of AP.With the contentious Fox TV negotiations behind it, Time Warner Cable is now dealing with 30 other channels currently offered to  subscribers.

Food Networks, the Starz channels and The Weather Channel are among those “due to expire soon, and we may be required to cease carriage of one or more of these services/stations in the near future,” the company said. That means cable customers could lose those 30 channels, which are listed below.

By law, the cable provider must give customers 30-days notice (see rule at bottom of this FCC page)  if any channels could be interrupted. Time Warner’s Orange County office did that this week by updating its programming alerts page. Some channels showed up in my last report about expiring channels. This either means the contract with the channel has expired and Time Warner continues to negotiate or Time Warner offered more than a 30-day notice. The company won’t say.

What’s the likelihood of losing those channels? Low, said Alex Dudley, a spokesman for Time Warner Cable.

“Contracts between programmers and distributors expire all the time and we’re required to provide our customers with notice of those expiring contracts,” he said. “It’s extremely rare when programming is loss.”

Still, contract disputes have left some cable customers staring at a blank screen. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in: Video & TV • • • • • | 41 Comments »

Time Warner prepares to lose Fox TV tonight

December 31st, 2009, 12:01 am by

I’m still on vacation but since Time Warner and Fox haven’t settled their differences, it’s looking like this will be another long New Year’s Eve. Here is the latest and I’ll offer updates when possible. ~ Tamara ‘Gadgetress’ Chuang

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It’s now pretty difficult to ignore the TV commercials hoping to pit the public against Fox TV or Time Warner Cable. The cable provider and TV network’s parent News Corp. have spent the past two weeks soliciting our sympathy because of a disagreement over money.

News Corp. wants to be compensated for the Fox TV network, which unlike cable channels doesn’t get paid by cable providers to offer the channel to cable customers. Time Warner says that price — reportedly $1/month per subscriber — is too much.

Neither side appears to be budging as tonight’s midnight deadline approaches and Fox plans to make good on its threat to pull its shows off the air for millions of Time Warner customers. News Corp.’s President Chase Carey told employees in a memo on Wednesday, “At this time, it looks like we will not reach an agreement and our channels may very well go off the air,” reported the New York Times.

Meanwhile, Time Warner’s chief executive Glenn Britt made it clear in a letter to Senator John Kerry that steps are being taken by the company to prepare for the loss of Fox. Time Warner agreed to let a mediator decide the fate, as Kerry suggested.

“…Time Warner Cable will agree to whatever interim steps are necessary to preserve consumers’ uninterrupted access to FOX programming after our current agreement expires on December 31, including your suggestion to enter into binding arbitration.” Read the rest of this entry »

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