APPROXIMATELY 1 MILLION Time Warner cable subscribers in Manhattan, Queens,
Staten Island, parts of Brooklyn and Bergen County are affected. They’ll
have to break out the rabbit ears or get a satellite dish to view WABC-TV
thanks to a clash of corporate giants. For those viewers, on Monday, ABC
stood for “Anyway But Cable.”
The dispute is so bitter that the two sides couldn’t even settle on who
pulled the plug. Turn on Channel 7 in New York, and you’ll see a message
from Time Warner Cable blaming Disney, which is the parent company of ABC.
“Disney has taken ABC away from you,” the Time Warner message reads.
“We had no legal right to continue to carry ABC after midnight last
night. The agreement from the last extension that we had expired, and
without the two sides coming together to agree on another extension, we just
didn’t have the legal right to do it,” said Barry Rosenblum, president of
Time Warner Cable.
The move couldn’t come at a worse time for ABC – right at the start of the
so-called May sweeps ratings period, when the networks deliver their best
material, such as the all-celebrity version of the most popular show on TV:
Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?
According to Millionaire host Regis Philbin, “It’s a shame. These two
great companies arguing over something and the public is the one being
denied access. The dispute centers on a complicated cable contract package,
involving Disney/ABC’s efforts to place additional cable channels on Time
Warner systems. Negotiations have been ongoing for months.
“Disney has refused to come to an agreement that would allow us to have
permission to continue to carry the ABC television signal on our cable
television systems that are served by their owned and operated stations,”
said Time Warner spokesman Michael Luftman. “In order for us to have the
legal right to carry the signal, we must have an agreement with Disney. We
don’t have that at this time.
For several months, Disney and Time Warner have been negotiating a new
long-term agreement for Time Warner’s cable systems to carry Disney
channels, which include ABC, the Disney Channel and ESPN.
