This afternoon, Charles Schueler, Cablevision’s executive vice president of communications, responded to the threats by Disney/ABC to pull WABC-TV off Cablevision on March 7 at midnight, thus jeopardizing the broadcast of the Academy Awards on Sunday night to viewers in New York City.
Schueler’s statement to the press said: “We pay more than $200 million a year to ABC Disney for their programming and now they say they will pull the plug unless Cablevision pays $40 million more in new fees for the exact same channels. It is not fair to force Cablevision customers to pay a new TV tax for programming ABC Disney gives away free, both over-the-air and on the Internet. In tough economic times, it is shameful that ABC Disney would hold viewers hostage by threatening to pull the plug, and we urge them to work with us to reach a fair agreement.”
ABC has tried, without success, to renegotiate a new contract with Cablevision for the past two years. ABC said viewers will be able to see the Academy Awards for free over-the-air if a deal isn’t struck.
There is an easy way for viewers to bypass the problems between ABC and Cablevision – buy a monster splitter, a decent antenna and monster THX coax cable and you’ll have the ability to pick up over-the-air signals as well those from cable – problem solved – at least for the viewer.
-Andrew-
You don’t need either a monster splitter or coax. I’m 20 miles from the center of Manhattan and I receive WABC-DT just fine with a $12 set of Radio Shack rabbit ears. The important thing is that you need a VHF antenna because WABC-DT is still on RF channel 7. You can have both the cable box and the antenna connected to the DTV at the same time; use the TV’s remote to select between them.
I find it interesting that WABC’s GM, in her interview on last night’s Eyewitness News, never mentioned over-the-air as a reception option; she focused on Verizon, DirecTV and Dish instead.
I happen to live in the viewing area. The only people who have problems is the viewer. We get additional rates and raped again big buisness. Well, screw ABC i don’t care if we lose them. It’s thier problem because they will lose my viewing dolars through ad revenue.
It is to bad for the money hungry rich wabc goons who thought that they were going to get more money from us the clients of cablevision just because they were threating to take channel 7 from us. I support cablevision 100% in their decision to allow them to go off we can find other ways to watch channel 7 for free so lets see who gives up first so im hoping that cablevision does not give in and fights for their customers.
If Cablevision was paying $200 million a year to channel 7 up to now, and they no longer have channel 7, is Cablevision now going to lower their monthly rates to reflect that $200 million a year savings on their part?