It looks like Cablevision
video customers are going to have a find a different way to watch the Oscars
Sunday night.
WABC-TV, which on
March 1 threatened to pull its signal from Cablevision in a
retransmission-consent dispute, sent the station to black at 12:01 a.m. on
March 7, as the parties could not come to terms.
In addition to the 82nd
annual Academy Awards telecast that is scheduled for March 7 on ABC at 8:30
p.m., Cablevision subscribers will miss the alphabet network's afternoon
coverage of the Los Angeles Lakers-Orlando Magic, in a rematch of last year's
National Basketball Association final.
Ironically, WABC-TV was airing
an episode of Lost, entitled
"Three Minutes," when the station went dark for Cablevision
subscribers.
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Cablevision, the predominant
cable operator in metro New York with some 3.1 million video subscribers,
claims that WABC-TV has been seeking $40 million annually for its signal,
amounting to a monthly license fee of about $1 per subscriber. The cable
operator said it already pays WABC-TV parent The Walt Disney Co. $200 million
annually for carriage of such cable networks as ESPN and Disney Channel, and that
forking over fees for the over-the-air station would constitute a TV tax.
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