Cablevision ends fight with Fox, but is the TV-fee war still brewing?

The impasse between Cablevision Systems Corp. and Fox News Corp. over retransmission fees for Fox TV channels came to an end on Saturday evening (just in time for the third game of the World Series). Although terms of the settlement were undisclosed, Cablevision said in an e-mail announcement that it agreed to pay Fox "an unfair price" for "mulitple channels of its programming including many in which our customers have little or no interest."

While the return of local Fox TV content might be good news for the three million subscribers (mostly in the New York suburbs) that were affected by the two-week outage, Cablevision customers will most lilkely bear the cost of the settlement. From Cablevision's e-mail to subscribers:

"In the end, our customers will pay more than they should for Fox programming, but less than they would have if we had accepted the unprecedented rates News Corp. was demanding when they pulled their channels off Cablevision."

For now, the Cablevision-Fox dispute is resolved. But, the war between broadcasters and distributors is far from over.

The Washington Post reports that this latest dispute may finally push the FCC and federal lawmakers to "fix" the regulations that govern broadcasters and distributors and hopefully ban such disputes from hurting consumers—a move that has long been advocated by Consumers Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports.

Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.), who had introduced a bill to reform retransmission rules early on during the Cablevision-Fox fight, said in a statement on Saturday:

"What I know is that this system is broken, and I think we're all better off if we have a dialogue about systemic reform and modernizing the law rather than just jumping into the fray and getting involved in each conflict in isolation."

In response, FCC chairman Julius Genachowski said the agency currently has its hands tied in such matters. According to the Post, in a letter to Kerry, Genachowski said that "current law does not give the agency the tools necessary to prevent service disruptions."

Fox returns to Cablevision [The New York Times]
Fox, Cablevision Reach Agreement, End Blackout [The Wall Street Journal]
Fox wins on fees dispute, but Cablevision succeeds in one goal: getting lawmakers to notice [The Washington Post]

—Paul Eng