Time Warner Cable May Not Carry US Open On CBS

Written by: Bob Larson Tennis on 23rd August 2013

Time Warner Cable May Not Carry US Open On CBS |

Time Warner Cable is in a battle with CBS and there has been a nearly three-week blackout of local CBS stations on its systems in Los Angeles, New York and Dallas. There are said to be about 3.5 million customers in areas of Dallas, Los Angeles and New York.

That means that as of now tennis fans in those areas won’t be able to watch CBS coverage of weekend action from the US Open if the dispute isn’t settled. So Time Warner Cable said that it would make the Tennis Channel free to its digital subscribers in CBS blackout markets – but while Tennis Channel will carry 200 hours of the US Open, it cannot carry live CBS matches.

CBS owns the rights to air more than 36 hours of U.S. Open coverage over the Labor Day weekend as well as the men’s and women’s semifinals and finals. ESPN also owns rights to broadcast hundreds of hours of matches, but not the ones CBS is showing.

The dispute is over retransmission fees, which include cash or other compensation that cable, satellite and telecommunications companies pay to local TV stations and consequently to networks such as CBS, for the right to carry broadcast programming in the local markets. The fees are split between the local station and affiliated network, and are the subject of negotiations.

With the decline of broadcast advertising, retransmission payments have been increasing. In 2011 they were said to equal almost $1.5 billion, more than 70 times higher than they had been in 2003.

Time Warner Cable is the second-largest operator of cable television systems in the U.S. In a statement on its website, Time Warner said, “CBS is making outrageous demands for the right to continue carrying their channels. We are holding the line against broadcasters who continue to make their stations available free over-the-air and online while they demand more from cable customers without delivering any additional value.”

There are various estimates as to how much each customer actually pays on cable for access to an individual network such as , but in this case it could be around 50 cents a month.

Interestingly, Verizon Communications just reached an agreement to carry CBS and CBS’ CEO Leslie Moonves told employees in a memo obtained by Reuters on Thursday that the same terms of Verizon’s deal were also offered to Time Warner Cable.

However the wire service noted that “leading cable companies such as Time Warner Cable and Comcast usually receive more favorable terms than newer TV services such as Verizon because they have been around longer and have more subscribers.”

Moonves has said that both sides will keep talking and some analysts have said that they believe the two sides will come to an agreement before the highly anticipated NFL season kicks off on CBS on September 8 – which would be the day of the US Open women’s finals.

“I cannot describe to you the frustration I feel at the way these negotiations have gone. Never in my most pessimistic moments did I ever think that they would have lasted this long and have been so difficult,” Moonves said in the memo. “Time Warner Cable is demanding different terms than any other company in the business.