The Director of Digital Communication at Time Warner Cable confirms that a deal has been struck with Fox and that programming will continue.
No other details as yet.
Update: press release text from TVMoJoe:
The Fox Networks Group and Time Warner Cable announced today that they have agreed in principle to a comprehensive distribution agreement to provide more than 13 million households with programming from Fox Television Stations, Fox Broadcasting (FOX), Fox Cable Networks and Fox’s regional sports networks. The deal also includes carriage agreements for Bright House Networks’ 2 million additional subscribers.
"We're pleased that, after months of negotiations, we were able to reach a fair agreement with Time Warner Cable -- one that recognizes the value of our programming,” said Chase Carey, Deputy Chairman, President and COO, News Corporation.
“We’re happy to have reached a reasonable deal with no disruption in programming for our customers,” said Glenn Britt, Chairman, President and CEO, Time Warner Cable.
Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
TV MoJoe has the press release.
http://www.thewrap.com/ind-column/fox-time-warner-deal-done-12422
Rats! I was hoping for a black-out.
I wonder when/if we’ll see details. I’m guessing they settled around 75-80 cents. Fox probably gave a bit, but TWC gave more.
You can always black them out. I don’t think Fox and TWC would really care if you did.
Time Warner Cable should have held out longer! TWC will just pass the cost on to the consumer. Yea for higher cable bills! I’m already paying $150 a month. It will not be long until ABC, CBS, NBC…etc start asking for $1. This is going to cost a fortune! 500 channels x $1.00 = $500 a month!
I wish the FCC was more lax with people who live in apartments. Even if people who own a house, jump to Dish Network or DirecTV,they will always have the apartment customers. Cable would think twice about raising rates or dropping channels without a drop in the bill.
I am happy with Comcast right now. But in a year and a half my bill will jump to around $120-$130. That’s after I drop HBO. I am in a promo right now. One nice thing Comcast did is move NFLN off of the sports pkg, and into a regular tier, with no rate increase. I was paying an extra $5 per month for the sports package. You don’t normally see a cable company do that. Usually it’s the other way around!
“FOX Firmly Holds Its Position As No. 1 Network for Fall Season”
“Banner Year for FX in 2009; Network Records Highest Ratings in 15-Year History”
“FOX Claims 4th Quarter Victory For The First Time In Network’s History”
and Fox news has 2, 3, and 4 times as many viewers as the other cable news stations…..was there any real doubt Time Warner would come to its senses?!
@Tom
I’m hoping this paves the way to pay-per-channel cable.
I honestly only watch probably 6-7 channels and shouldn’t be paying the same amount as someone who watches 100+.
I’ll take $5 per channel any day.
I just wish cable companies & satellites would stop bundling the channels. If I could pick the channels I wanted to watch, and just pay for them, I’d be thrilled. I’d have about 15 channels and be very happy.
Just pretend that you’re being charged only for those 6-7, 15 channels, and everything else is thrown in as bonus. Then, if you will, exclude the “bonus” channels from your box/TV channel memory. That way it will really feel like you’re paying only for your favorite channels. Anyway, most new subscribers would have a tough time deciding which channels they like *before* they subscribe and watch to find out which ones they like.
No, no, no, say it ain’t so. I thought the sky was falling and FOX would never be broadcast anywhere in the world again. I thought, like all lib viewers, that the only “NEWS CHANNEL” left would be PMSNBC. Oh, oh, oh, for such a perfect world.
If anything, they should give anyone that watches CNN or PMSNBC a dollar a month discount. How is it that every Airport, McDonalds, Motel 6, and many other food chains and motels, have only one news channel going 24/7, CNN????? I’ve gone to some of the managers of these places and they tell me FOX isn’t available or that CNN always comes on automatically.
I wasn’t honestly that worried–could have just watched the few FOX shows I like online.
I wonder how much my bill is going up?
This had nothing to do with FOXNews. How many times did News Corp. and TWC have to confirm that the negotiations “had no impact on broadcasts of FX and Foxnews channel”
They have the same parent company but they are essentially two different entities. If no deal was reached, there still would have been an FNC broadcast playing, just no FOX broadcast playing.
I REFUSE to patronise any Restaurant or Doctor/Dentist that has one of those Monitors in their buildings, and when I am at the Airport I seek an area where I can wait for my flight in peace and quiet without having CNN RAM “The Woes of the World” down my throat.
It’s not a matter of pretending to only be paying for the channels you watch. Why should I pay over $100 a month in cable when I only watch a few channels, but am basically forced to pay that much to watch my shows on channels they only offer in the higher tiered packages.
I say again that the a la carte option needs to be mandated for those who wish to use it.
I see no reason why it has to be an either-or situation. Bundling could still exist for those who find it a value. Those like myself who look at fewer than a dozen channels on a regular basis, shouldn’t be made to subsidize all those other channels we don’t care about, or actively disaprove of. The way the cablers pepper each “tier” with a few desireable offerings to peddle numerous offerings most don’t want is an exercise in greed at its most naked. Their actions demand counter-measures.
Let the marketplace determine which channels survive. After all, no matter how fond we may be of a given channel or program, it’s just television; we won’t die if we have to get by without it.
shocking
The biggest problem with cable tiering is they put a couple of channels people want in one tier and a couple in another tier and then want us to go digital. I don’t mind (well I do to the extent it costs too much) the idea of basic/expanded cable bundling, but the bundling at the digital level is counterintuitive. If I could just choose from those additional channels I would be happy and would gladly pay the extra. I used to pay extra for a HBO, Cinemax, and Showtime bundle (an additional thirty bucks for just those three, not 6 HBOs etc.) but they took that away from us because they wanted us to force us to go digital. We are just not home enough and did not even watch those channels enough to justify the extra cost so they did us a favor. My bill is about thirty-five dollars cheaper and I rent anything else I want to watch. 35 times 12 is a lot of rentals.
Three years ago today (1/2/2007) I gathered up all the Cable Equipment in my house and returned it all to the Cable Companies. In the years preceding this I had become increasingly disgruntled with the Programmers who were taking away many of the shows I used to enjoy watching and replacing them with cheesy non-scripted programming. I had also become perplexed with the ever-increasing amounts of advertising being tossed at us viewers. There were so many ads on during just one break that I had difficulty remembering what had happened during the Program BEFORE the Break had begun. The Last Straw was when I saw an Advertisment for an “Adult Product” (The one that likes to rip off an old Elvis Tune) being aired DURING A CHILDREN’S PROGRAM!
I went on Vacation that week and when I returned I spent the unused Vacation Money on DVD Box Sets of over a Dozen Programs, nearly 500 Episodes worth. I added a Couple of Box Sets each month after that until the New Year, when I had enough Programs to last, literally for the Entire Year! (About Four Hours each Day) Dropping my Subscription I re-allocated the money formerly spent on the Subscription Fee (About $65.00 a Month) to purchase even more DVDs. Today I have over 18,000 Hours of Programming in the Form of TV Shows, Movies and Other Programming. It will take me more than a decade to watch them all, I get my news from the Web, and if something Important occurs I have an Antenna attached to my TV Set to pull in off the air. IMO Cable has become Redundant.