Fight Between Time Warner Cable & Fox TV

At midnight New Year’s Eve, FOX has threatened to pull the plug on Time Warner Cable customers – withholding their programming unless we pay massive price increases.

Editorial comment:  This wouldn't be an issue if you had a sattalite dish, which is actually cheaper than cable, with tons and tons of more channels to watch.

Fox responds:

The current dispute affects several markets where long-term deals with Fox television stations are about to expire.

According to news reports, Fox has requested a monthly $1 per subscriber fee in exchange for allowing Time Warner to carry the network's signals. Time Warner has so far refused.

Fox said, "Time Warner Cable is using programming costs as an excuse to raise your bill while they continue to rake in billions in profits from both user fess and local advertising. 

A News Corp. spokeswoman said the network has attempted to negotiate "in good faith" with Time Warner for the past nine months. "Our position in these negotiations is entirely reasonable — we are simply asking for fair compensation for the impressive value our Fox programming offers," the statement says. Fox says it will continue negotiating with Time Warner "in hopes of reaching a fair agreement."

Such spats between Time Warner and network affiliates are not unprecedented.  NBC affiliate KXAN, in Austin, Texas was off the air for almost a month in the fall of 2008 after its owner, LIN TV, got in a fight with Time Warner over retransmission fees. They eventually hammered out a confidential compromise, and life returned to normal.


Time Warner currently has some of the highest cable user fees in the nation.