Since New Year's Day, Time Warner Cable customers have been unable to watch many of their favorite local teams -- courtesy of yet another retransmission dispute between a broadcaster and a cable operator. As has traditionally been the case this fight is about money, with Time Warner Cable refusing to pay what they claim was a 53% rate hike demand by MSG. More than a week and a half later and the companies still are at an impasse over prices, with each side blaming the other for the blackout. MSG continues to insist the 53% hike claim isn't true:
MSG says that the cable operator, the nation s second largest, has rejected all of its proposals for two years. Time Warner Cable says that MSG has twice reneged on a 6.5 percent rate increase and that its final demand was for a 53 percent boost. "That s just such a gross distortion of our conversations and it s not anywhere close to what we ve talked about, said Mike Bair, the president of MSG Media. He added, The sense of any movement to get the channels back on doesn t exist."
Meanwhile cable customers, already feeling like they pay too much money for cable, are being driven to watch pirated streams of sporting events -- the same pirated streams broadcasters and cable operators spend their time (when they're not engaged in retrans disputes) complaining about. Like with all of these disputes it will end with customers paying more money -- after dealing with blackouts and an ugly game of PR ping pong.read comment(s)