CBS, Time Warner deal restores broadcast to 2 million homes in New York, Dallas and Los Angeles
03 Sep 2013
A protracted standoff that saw millions of US homes miss hit shows and threatened to interfere with the start of football season ended yesterday with a programming arrangement agreed between Time Warner Cable and CBS Corp, reports AP.
The deal covers over 3 million homes in New York, Dallas and Los Angeles that were not able to receive programming from CBS or CBS-owned channels since 2 August the report said. Broadcasting was restored last evening on the East Coast.
The dispute concerned the amount of fee Time Warner Cable Inc would pay for programming on CBS and other channels including Showtime Networks, CBS Sports Network and the Smithsonian channel. There was no immediate disclosure of the terms of the deal.
The agreement included retransmission fees the cable operator paid to CBS per subscriber, that had been a bone of contention with the parties.
The dispute had come at particularly critical time for networks and cable companies with more and more Americans turning to alternative ways to watch TV including online or via Roku boxes or Apple TV. The two companies came under increased pressure to reach an agreement with CBS holding deals to broadcast NFL and Southeastern Conference football, as also the start of the US Open tennis tournament.
With the agreement, CBS programming has been restored to millions of cable subscribers largely in three major cities: New York, Los Angeles and Dallas. According to Bill Carter writing the The New York Times, the outcome served to highlight the leverage that the owners of important television content, especially sports like N.F.L. football, exercised over distributors like cable systems. The upcoming National Football League season, set to get underway this week, includes key games every week on CBS.
Carter cites an executive involved in the negotiation as saying last night that it was hugely important. The executive asked not be named as the participants agreed not to disclose details on the agreement beyond the official announcement.
Time Warner Cable executives had said earlier that one reason they suspended CBS programming in early August was because of the recognition that it would lose leverage the closer it got to the NFL season.
The two sides agreed not to release any specific information on the terms of the agreement. The standoff over an increase in fees CBS was seeking for the right to retransmit CBS stations in the three major cities and some other locations on Time Warner Cable systems lasted exactly a month.
