Time Warner KO'd in PPV-boxing dispute

By Paige Albiniak
( Broadcasting & Cable )
published

The Supreme Court Tuesday decided against hearing a case on who is
responsible for determining the residential or commercial status of pay-per-view
customers and charging them accordingly.

In 1996, the Melody Lane Lounge in Massillon, Ohio, paid Time Warner Cable
$39.95 to air a fight between Riddick Bowe and Andrew Golota.

The bar should have paid the commercial rate of $1,000 to National Satellite
Sports, which was carrying the fight to commercial entities, NSS argued.

After NSS took the case to court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth
Circuit ruled that Time Warner had to pay NSS $4,500 in damages and $26,000 for
costs and attorneys' fees, while the bar's owners settled out of court.

The court wrote that Time Warner Cable should have known that the bar was a
business when it went to set up the service and, thus, it should have refused to
give the bar consumer rates to view the fight.

Time Warner Cable argued that it is impossible for it to
know the status of every customer ordering a PPV event.

Paige Albiniak
Paige Albiniak

Contributing editor Paige Albiniak has been covering the business of television for more than 25 years. She is a longtime contributor to Next TV, Broadcasting + Cable and Multichannel News. She concurrently serves as editorial director for The Global Entertainment Marketing Academy of Arts & Sciences (G.E.M.A.). She has written for such publications as TVNewsCheck, The New York Post, Variety, CBS Watch and more. Albiniak was B+C’s Los Angeles bureau chief from September 2002 to 2004, and an associate editor covering Congress and lobbying for the magazine in Washington, D.C., from January 1997 - September 2002.