A showdown between Disney, the parent company of ABC, and New York-area cable provider Cablevision went nuclear today, as the Mouse pulled the Alphabet from the—um, the cable-TV company—just before its biggest broadcast of the year, the Academy Awards.
If you’re like me, the details of these contretemps make your eyes glaze over, but the gist is: Disney wants more money for the rights to retransmit its local ABC channel, WABC, than Cablevision is willing to pay. (Media Decoder has more specifics.) With the traditional ad-supported network-TV business getting rougher, broadcasters have been looking for ways to become more like cable, here by charging cable-like fees for major-affiliate “retransmission” rights. There was a similar showdown at New Year’s between Fox and Time Warner Cable; expect more in the future, as cable companies and their content providers fight over their share of the cash.
Fortunately, I’m not a Cablevision subscriber, so you can follow my Twitter feed this evening for my live-tweeting of the Oscars. Who needs television?