While Time Warner Cable subscribers watch closely as the CBS standoff enters its fourth week, TV distributors should be monitoring the negotiations even more diligently, because the ultimate settlement is likely to set a pattern for the entire industry.
The CBS chief suggests that CBS’s ability to come to a swift and amicable retrans contract with Verizon can only mean that Time Warner Cable is the cause of the continuing standoff in the current retrans blackout. “You should know that Time Warner Cable has been offered almost exactly the same deal for CBS carriage to which Verizon has agreed,” Moonves says.
