CBS, Time Warner Cable reach deal
Are you ready for some football?
Less than a week before the kickoff of the NFL season, Time Warner Cable yesterdayź¦ cut a deal with CBS to resume carrying the networkās programming.
The agreement ended a blackout that began Aug. 3, when TWC balked at CBSās demand for a monthly, $2-per-customer fee ā up from an earlier charge estimated at betšween 50 and 75 cents.
Terms of the new pact weren’t revealed, but any increased costs are expected to be passed on to cable subscribers in the form of higher monthly bills.
The corporate standoff affected more than 3 million Time Warner Cable customers across the country who weren’t able to watch CBS, CBS Sports, several Showtime channels and the Smithsonian Channel.
Programming returned last night.
In a statemešnt, Time Warner Cable Chairman and CEO Glenn Britt expressed appreciation for viewersā āpaš·tience and loyalty.ā
āAs in all of our negotiations, we wanted to hold down costs and retain our ability to deliver a great video experience foš³r our customers,āź§ he said.
āWhile we certainly didn’t get everything we wanted, ultimately, we ended up in a much better place than when we started.ā
In a memo to CBS employees, company CEO Leslie Moonves said, āThāis was a far more protracted dispute than anyone at CBS anticipated, but in spite of the pain it caused to all of us, and, most importantly, the inconvenience to our viewers who were affected, it was an important one, and one worth pursuing to a satisfactory conclusion.ā
Moonves said the networkšÆ will be āreceiving fair compensation for CBS content, and we also have the ability to monetize our content going forward on all the new, developing platforms that are right now transforming the way people watch telź¦evision.ā
In š ·addition to the ācarriage fee,ā a major bone of contention between the companies was which side would control digital rights to programming available over the Internet.
Moonvesā memo suggests that CBS ā which had irked Time Warner Cable by making some shows avašilable for free over the Internet ā will retain the ability to sell the digital rights.
Time Warner Cable, meanwhile, wā±āill restore āvideo on demandā access to certain CBS shows, although it was unclear whether that would include full and past seasons, or access through iPads or other mobile devices.
Acting FCC Chairwoman Mignon Clyburn said she was pleased by the resolution of the impasse, āwhich for too long . . . deprived millions of consumers ofš access to Cš°BS programming.ā