Posted on 12/31/2009 1:58:22 PM PST by Snickering Hound
Phone, cable and broadcast companies can get away with a lot in DC, but they best not stand between a man and his football games. As we noted yesterday, Time Warner Cable and News Corporation are engaged in a retransmission fee fight that could wind up with Fox programming being pulled from Time Warner Cable's channel lineup. This apparently displeases football fan and U.S. Senator John Kerry, who sent a letter to News Corp. warning them that Uncle Sam would step in if Fox programming is disrupted later on today
(Excerpt) Read more at dslreports.com ...
IIRC, several years back there was a similar issue where football wouldn't be broadcast in a certain area, and John Kerry stuck his nose in the middle of it.
Is Kerry the Senator from France, or Vietnam? I keep forgetting.
Go to hell, JOhn KERry
John Kerry wants his 15 minutes of fame. Let him go to Iran, lets hope they want to keep him. Would do us a HUGE favor
I’ve been pricing Directv and Dish..don’t know which is better to go with
*************
Friggin' amazing how the government can step in and fix ANY problem, isn't it?
Anybody remember where we put that old Constitution thing?
Is Kerry still in DC or is he back "home" in Massachusetts?
-PJ
Aw geeez...You did not have to go there..
Stahting tomowwow, I pwomise...nah...it's Kewwey and Fwank...no new weaf...
I guess we’re going to find out.
We have no digital converter boxes in this house, so we may be out of luck come football time. I guess I’ll be searching the webz for an illegal feed. heh.
Drive a nail into Time Warner’s black heart.
If the shoes were reversed they would destroy Fox.
The local CBS affiliate in Topeka did this recently with Cox Cable. They had an interesting argument - the cable company participates in no way in the cost and production of programming (or fees to the NCAA etc), so why should they be allowed to air it for free, and profit from it.
The interesting counter-argument a local talk radio guy made was: what about the Drudge Report. They don’t produce anything that they link to...yet they profit from it. What’s the difference?
The question also came up: “Isn’t CBS worried about losing viewership, if their spot on the cable dial goes dark?” Surprisingly, the station manager said that the bulk of their viewership (something like 70%) watched on an antenna, which really surprised me.
Ultimately, the local affiliate won (were using final 4 tournament for leverage). They got a per subscriber fee, which Cox passed directly onto their customers....
Which opens up a whole new argument over a la cart programming...
Alot to ponder. I think Fox should be able to charge for their product though, so I’m on their side...but if I had cable, I would probably cancel it as a result. WHAT THE HECK does John Kerry have to do with this...and why does he think his committee has ‘jurisdiction’?
This affects all FOX prorgamming: FX, Fox News and your Fox affilate. Rupert Murdock wants a buck a subscriber from Time Warner and Comcast or HE yanks it. It’s not them taking it off.
TW has offered 50-60 cents per customer and will accept arbitration. Rupert is the one play Hardball to use a competitors term.
If he wins, Disney and all the others will follow suit and then our cable bills will be really hit hard.. I’ll break out the rabbit ears to watch the Bearcats beat the Gators.
Lucky for me the Bengals are on NBC this weekend.
The local Fox TV station, FX channel and some Fox Sports Net channels will be cut off for all Time Warner customers. It doesn’t matter if it is digital cable or standard.
If you have an antenna and a TV capable of receiving digital TV (HDTV or over the air converter box) you can get the local Fox channel with an antenna.
Personally, I think Time Warner isn’t the bad guy in this. Rupert Murdoch is trying to get a more than 300% increase in the fees paid by Time Warner, fees that will be directly passed on to Time Warner cable customers. Murdoch is trying to get one dollar per subscriber for the local Fox affiliate. The current average is 30 cents per subscriber.
Yes FOX has the right to ask whatever it wants, but Time-Warner also has the right to negotiate it to something sane. After all, whatever they agree to, YOU will be getting the extra bill!
” because two parties couldn’t come together in time is no solution.”
Not touchin’ it!
The one nice thing about dish, is that once you have service on your home, you can set it up rather easily on your motor-home.
My brother uses that feature. When you’re out camping or traveling for a few weeks to a month, it’s nice not to be totally cut off.
Not all. Two years ago, TWC in North Idaho had the same dispute with the local FOX station - we went without FOX for one year. It was brutal missing 24 and NFL games, I would have switched to satellite in an instant, but we can't get a signal where we live.
From looking at the local TWC website, it looks like the agreement that they reached last year is still in effect and we will not lose FOX again in this current dispute.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.