TWC

The FCC says it’s working to resolve a fee dispute that has kept CBS Corp. programming off Time Warner Cable systems serving more than 3 million viewers since Aug. 2. “The commission is engaged at the highest levels with the respective parties and working to bring the impasse to an end,” Justin Cole, an agency spokesman, said yesterday. “We urge all parties to resolve this matter as quickly as possible so consumers can access the programming they rely on and are paying for.” The statement didn’t offer details.

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.

Time Warner Cable will offer free antennas starting Friday, allowing customers to receive blacked-out CBS stations over the air. Customers will be able to collect them at local TWC offices.

Former FCC Commissioner Michael J. Copps: The CBS-Time Warner Cable stand-off “goes beyond programming to the functionality of the Internet itself. CBS is blacking out access to CBS.com for Time Warner Cable broadband customers nationwide — even those outside the affected markets and even those who are not cable television subscribers! CBS is perpetrating an audacious violation of the FCC Open Internet (“net neutrality”) rules. These rules guarantee consumer access to lawful content. They are designed to prevent just this sort of corporate censorship. Someone here needs to stand up for consumers.”

CBS and Time Warner Cable have agreed to suspend the blackout in New York — but only long enough to air debates among candidates in two of the city’s political races.

Ken Auletta: What we’re witnessing are not the deliberate, calculated moves of two skilled chess players but, rather, two aging players who fear that their game is being disrupted. Thirty years ago, the traditional TV world was blindsided by cable; today, cable operators and traditional TV are both being blindsided by a new crop of technologies. Whenever the blackout ends, the underlying upheaval that helped to cause it won’t go away.

Verizon FiOS is throwing a bone to CBS employees who can no longer watch the network in New York, Los Angeles and Dallas because of the broadcaster’s three-week-old fight with Time Warner Cable. In a memo to staffers, CBS said Verizon FiOS is offering employees “exclusive discounts and special promotions.” Verizon is even going to send sales teams to CBS offices in those cities this week to sign up new customers.

The contract dispute between CBS and Time Warner Cable is approaching the two-week mark with no hint of an imminent settlement. Neither side in the standoff has mentioned any progress over the last several days. Both have continued to level charges and accusations of blame for TWC’s decision to remove CBS’s stations in areas the cable company covers, which include subscribers in New York, Los Angeles and Dallas.

With Time Warner and CBS locked in a nasty contractual dispute, leaving 3.2 million cable customers without the network, Verizon is beginning to benefit. The telecom giant, according to industry sources, has seen its FiOS subscription base rise between 5% and 15% in various neighborhoods compared to last year.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) on Monday sent a letter to CBS Corp. CEO Les Moonves and Time Warner Cable chief Glenn Britt, urging them to end the dispute that has resulted in CBS-owned channels being blacked out in Los Angeles, New York and Dallas for a second week.

The blackout on Time Warner Cable systems, which is affecting 3.2 million customers in New York, Los Angeles and Dallas, has created a double-digit spike in antennas in those markets at RadioShack, a spokeswoman for the electronics retailer said Monday.

Time Warner Cable reiterated that it will not issue credits to 3 million-plus customers related to the blackout of CBS stations in New York, L.A. and Dallas — which is now in Day 11 — while it will credit Showtime subscribers who have lost the network.

Three frustrated Time Warner Cable customers on Thursday sued the cable TV provider over its decision last month to drop Journal Broadcast-owned NBC affiliate WTMJ Milwaukee from its lineup. TWC dropped WTMJ on July 25 over a retrans contract dispute. Both companies have been running public relations campaigns ever since trying to convince the public the other side is making unreasonable demands.

Digital video rights have become a major sticking point in the carriage dispute between Time Warner Cable and CBS Corp., according to the Wall Street Journal. In their negotiations, the companies made significant progress on the money Time Warner Cable would pay to carry the CBS TV signals, but one big roadblock was that the cable operator believes those fees should also buy it the rights to distribute content via on-demand platforms, people familiar with the talks say. WSJ subscribers can read the full story here.

At a New York City Council hearing, the two companies said that they had resumed negotiations over retransmission fees. As the blackout goes into its seventh day and as CBS is scheduled to broadcast the final rounds of the PGA Championship this weekend, the pressure is on to strike a deal. The City Council is urging the FCC to intervene.

CBS EVP Martin Franks made the disclosure — which Time Warner Cable confirms — in response to questions at a meeting today called by a New York City Council subcommittee looking at the nearly week-long programming black out on TWC’s systems. No details yet on what compromises, if any, the companies are making in the dispute

The percent of illegal downloads of Monday’s episode from areas affected by the dispute increased dramatically.

In the heat of its nasty contractual dispute with CBS — which has left millions of subscribers without the Eye Network and Showtime for nearly a week — the cable giant is now threatening to yank a slew of other channels. According to a legal notice the cable giant quietly posted in newspapers today, its deals with more than 50 channels are due to expire soon, “and we may be required to cease carriage of one or more of these … stations in the near future.” Among them: Lifetime, E!, Style, Turner Classic Movies, the NHL Network and a host of foreign-language channels.

If the Time Warner Cable blackout is hurting CBS, there is at least one figure offering striking evidence to the contrary. By one measure, household primetime ratings on Tuesday were down a mere 2% in the New York market. After that, though, things aren’t as rosy.

Regulators in Washington probably won’t heed Time Warner Cable’s call for help in a dispute that has blocked CBS shows from more than 3 million subscribers in New York, Los Angeles and Dallas. TWC, in a letter to the FCC released Aug. 5, asked the agency for “prompt action” to alter the rules to address “coercive” tactics by CBS. But FCC Acting Chairwoman Mignon Clyburn has said the agency lacks the authority to intervene, and rewriting rules for settling such disputes would take too long to end the current disruption, according to Paul Gallant, Washington-based managing director at Guggenheim Securities.

The board of directors of the CBS Television Network Affiliates Association today came out in support of CBS Corp. in its retransmission consent dispute with Time Warner Cable.

Was Time Warner Cable being hypocritical this week when it proposed to carry CBS-owned stations on an a la carte basis — which CEO Les Moonves rejected as PR “grandstanding”? The broadcaster distributed evidence today to support that view, including a class action suit filed in June that accused Time Warner Cable of abusing its distribution clout in Southern California by failing to give subscribers a choice to pay for TWC channels that offer Los Angeles Lakers and Dodgers games.

Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), who recently won John F. Kerry’s Senate seat, on Tuesday asked the FCC to step in and restart retrans negotiations between the broadcast network and the cable MSO. “I believe the public interest would be best served if carriage is restored by the parties at the earliest possible time so that consumers are not long caught in the middle,” he said.

In a letter released Tuesday, Moonves rebuffed Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt’s offer to allow CBS to sell its programming to consumers “a la carte” instead of bundled with other channels.

Three million Time Warner Cable customers in New York, Los Angeles, Dallas and other cities remained without access to CBS for a third day on Sunday, after the cable provider dropped the network in a spat over fees. The two sides couldn’t agree on the status of their talks either, with CBS saying on Sunday that no negotiations were taking place. A Time Warner representative maintained that, “Talks continue.”

CBS chief Les Moonves couldn’t resist alluding to his tense retransmission consent negotiations with Time Warner Cable — even though he didn’t want to address the matter directly in a Wednesday conference call with analysts. “We will update you when we have more news,” he said in prepared remarks, adding that CBS will remain “resolute” as it faces a Friday deadline when its stations might go dark on TWC cable systems in New York, Los Angeles and Dallas.

The two sides negotiated through the day Monday to avoid a programming blackout, then set a new deadline of Friday, Aug. 2, at 5 p.m. Eastern time. Late last night, Time Warner Cable briefly took down CBS stations, but quickly reinstated them at the broadcaster’s request and continued negotiations.

Time Warner Cable now says it has agreed to yet another extension with CBS “while we continue negotiations.” This moves the deadline to Friday, Aug. 2, at 5 p.m. Eastern time.

CBS and Time Warner Cable are still engaged in “very difficult negotiations” over how much TWC will pay CBS-owned stations per subscriber, CBS CEO Leslie Moonves told TV critics at TCA Summer TV Press Tour today. “The deadline is 5 p.m. ET today — I hope we don’t go dark.”

This dispute doesn’t have the titan-vs.-titan glamour of Time Warner Cable’s fight with CBS — where negotiators gave themselves until Monday to agree on retransmission consent terms. But it’s important to a little more than 500,000 Time Warner Cable customers who today find themselves without Journal Communications’ NBC programming in Milwaukee; Green Bay, Wis.; and Palm Springs, Calif.; and CBS in Omaha, Neb.

The parties again have set a new deadline to settle their retransmission consent battle: This time it’s 5 p.m. ET on Monday. The fight involves CBS-owned stations that reach some 3.5 million Time Warner Cable homes, primarily in New York, Los Angeles and Dallas.

The previous deadline of Wednesday has been moved to 9 a.m. ET Thursday. CBS boss Leslie Moonves says Time Warner Cable can afford to compensate CBS fairly without passing the cost on to customers. Meanwhile, a spokesman for Time Warner Cable says that it has offered CBS significant fees, but “their current demands don’t represent a good value for our customers.”

Although neither side is taking shots at each other publicly, there is an undercurrent of tension between Time Warner Cable and CBS Corp. as the two companies attempt to negotiate a new distribution deal. Time Warner Cable’s agreement to carry CBS-owned TV stations, the basic cable channels CBS Sports Network and Smithsonian, and the pay network Showtime expired at the end of June. Since then, there have been a couple of extensions, the latest one running to a few days before the end of the month.

Negotiations failed between Journal Broadcast Group and Time Warner Cable, which means the cable provider will no longer be allowed to carry the Palm Springs, Calif., MNT affiliate. A June 30 deadline was extended to 11:59 p.m. Wednesday. But that deadline ran out with no new deal, a Time Warner spokesman said late Wednesday.

Several companies put in initial bids to buy the video streaming service, and now it’s looking like both DirecTV and Time Warner also made follow-up offers.

Negotiations between CBS and Time Warner Cable to renew their four-year-old pact — covering retransmission of CBS owned-and-operated TV stations and carriage of cable nets including Showtime — are expected to take several more weeks to resolve, according to a source familiar with the talks.

Time Warner Cable would rather grow through acquisitions than be bought by billionaire John Malone, and has been eyeing Cablevision, its most coveted target, and No. 3 cable operator Cox Cable, according to three people familiar with Time Warner Cable’s thinking.

The distribution deal between CBS and Time Warner Cable expired at midnight ET on Sunday, and reps for the two sides said negotiations covering the Eye’s O&Os and cable networks continued past the deadline. No blackouts of CBS-owned networks have been reported on Time Warner Cable systems.

Billionaire John Malone is exploring scenarios for how Charter Communications Inc. could acquire Time Warner Cable, even after his initial overtures were rebuffed, according to people familiar with the discussions. Malone’s Liberty Media Corp., which owns 27% of Charter, is working on how to structure an offer with enough cash to win over TWC investors, said the people, who asked not to be named because the deliberations are private. Time Warner Cable isn’t interested in a deal and doesn’t think Liberty and Charter can come up with an offer that’s attractive, according to people familiar with management’s thinking.

Scripps Networks has a TV Everywhere deal with Time Warner Cable, allowing viewers access to on-demand programming. Content from five networks will be available to the cable operator’s subscribers on an authenticated basis.