FCC Gets an Earful From Fox and Cablevision

William Lake opened a can of worms last week when he asked the chieftains of Cablevision and Fox to ’splain their ongoing retransmission stand-off. Fox yanked three of its stations--WNYW-TV, WTXF-TV and WWOR-TV--from Cablevision systems Oct. 15. Lake, head of the Federal Communications Commission’s Media Bureau, asked for evidence or otherwise of “good-faith” negotiations between the two, which remained intransigent on the eve of the World Series.

According to a report at televisionbroadcast.com, Michael Hopkins of Fox delivered an eight-page letter to Lake, detailing negotiations between the two since September of 2009. Hopkins said Cablevision has been getting the TV station signals for free, and Fox started angling for compensation last year. He said Cablevision execs asked that a market value be established, so Fox did a deal with Time Warner Cable and returned to Cablevision with those terms. A bevy of counter-proposals ensued--none of them to the satisfaction of both parties.

“Based on established rates for cable programming services that do not approach the performance of the Fox Stations, such as the reported $3.40 Cablevision charged other [multichannel video providers] for MSG and MSG Plus in 2009, it would be reasonable for us to seek a rate between $5 and $6,” Hopkins said, referring to a monthly, per-subscriber fee. He then said Fox low-balled that, but Cablevision said no dice.

Cablevision in turn said that as long as it was picking up the station signals via fiber feed, it would consider that authorization to carry them. Fox then said no dice.

Cablevision’s Mac Budill shot Lake a 17-pager, saying Fox hadn’t negotiated in good faith because it brought a “take it or leave it” offer based on the Time Warner “most favored nation” rate.
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