Report: TWC Has More to Lose In CBS Blackout

Time Warner Cable's blackout of CBS channels in New York, Los Angeles and Dallas turns four-weeks-old on Friday, so it's natural to ask: Are pay-TV customers getting angry enough to consider cord-cutting?

Both companies are arguably taking some risk allowing this dispute to drag on for so long, but according to Leon Lazaroff at The Street, for Time Warner Cable the risks may be more immediate. The start of the NFL season is just 10 days away, and fans blacked-out of football games could vent considerable frustrations onto their local cable-TV provider.

The Street reports Mike Vorhaus, the colorful head of strategy and investment consulting at Frank N. Magid Associates, who describes himself as "a digital transition guy, a disruption guy," said the number of people choosing to cut the cord, the audacious act of rejecting the pay-TV bundle altogether, is "very small but growing." These folks are still paying for some television viewing but they're probably paying less as they cobble together access to Netflix and other online offerings.

In a Magid study published this week, the percentage of pay-TV subscribers who said they are "very likely" to cancel their service in the next 12 months and not switch to another service grew to 2.7%, a 42% increase from 2011 when the figure was 1.9%. The survey of 2,400 respondents ages 8 to 64 was conducted from April 24 to May 8. It will be interesting to see a follow-up study in the wake of the CBS-Time Warner Cable scrum.

CBS, meanwhile, has taken to making occasional digs at Time Warner Cable, boasting that it recently secured a new retransmission agreement with Verizon, which also serves New York, Los Angeles and Dallas through its pay-TV FiOS service. CBS CEO Leslie Moonves, in a letter to his employees, said Time Warner Cable "has been offered almost exactly the same deal." Don't we wish we could sit in on those negotiations.

Read More Now