Good news for aging New York Giants loyalists and Yankee fans who want to do a pre-purchase check-in on Cliff Lee: This evening, Cablevision emailed customers — who have lost all Fox programming, including the World Series, due to the ongoing battle between the two companies — and said they would reimburse them for Major League Baseball’s $9.95 Postseason.tv service.
In the email to the company’s 3 million customers — primarily in the New York suburbs — Cablevision said:
Attention Cablevision Subscribers!
Don’t miss a minute of the World Series online!
As Fox continues to hold our customers hostage from enjoying sports events, Cablevision would like to extend a special offer for you to enjoy the World Series at home, online!
MLB.com is offering a $9.95 option to watch the World Series and Cablevision will credit your account $10.00.
Thanks, Cablevision. Any ideas for Jets fans who will be blacked out this weekend if you and Fox don’t kiss and make up by then?
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eh, sounds kinda like a fair trade – they even made a nickel! whooo!
Right now I’m having a great time…
Listening to the game on ESPN Radio.
I highly recommend it.
To quote a Mr. Jim Gaffigan:
Have you watched television?
To be fair, usually radio announcers are much more tolerable than TV announcers when it comes to baseball. I’m a big fan of syncing up the radio broadcast to the TV when I can.
Unfortunately, this year you get to decide between Joe Buck and Tim McCarver on TV, or Jon Miller and Joe Morgan on the radio. The choice of frying pan or fire is a difficult one.
Terrible choices. Learning spanish for the sole purpose of using the SAP function doesn’t seem crazy given the alternatives…
As a Yankee fan, I am stuck with the radio-announcing duo from hell…
John Sterling & Suzyn Waldman.
After that, even Rocky & Bullwinkle would be a step up – so John Miller & Joe Morgan are tolerable.
And – as I’ve pointed out – I have a DTV converter box, so I can watch the games if I really want to. Tonight’s game is not that important to me, but this weekend I’ll be living in my kitchen, which is where the DTV set is located in my home.
I love John, can’t stand Suzyn.
May as well start writing the “Cablevision forgets to credit a zillion fans for $9.95 streaming of World Series” article…
And see if we can work a “grocery shrink ray” and a “mislabeled price tag at Target” angle into it. It’ll be gold!
Regardless, I’m optimistic Cablevision will follow through. It’s a move aimed to gain/maintain the support of their subscribers, so messing it up would be doubly bad.
Dude, this is a telecom company we’re talking about. You really think there’s not a chance they’ll fuck this up? This players in this industry are the kings of ineptitude. Maybe if they actually had to compete with another company and earn their money they would learn.
Funny. I was going to post this very same comment.
This is what happens when cable companies seduce you into buying cable television due to the digital switch. You end up watching regular TV…live…on the internet, I laugh at them.
I can’t help but see the irony here. Cabelvision says fox programing is not worth what they ate asking, but apparently some of its worth enough for cablevision to jump through hoops to find you alternatives.
Well, it is the World Series after all. One event a year isn’t exactly what I would call “worth it”
FOX =/= Major League Baseball.
FOX happens to be the one who paid MLB a truckload of money to be the sole television carrier of the game. Now if cablevision doesn’t want to pay FOX to carry their channels and instead decides to just let their customers go straight to the source of the games (The MLB), then that means it’s worth enough to pay for MLB but not the rest of FOX’s programming.
I can’t help but see the irony here. Cabelvision says fox programing is not worth what they ate asking, but apparently some of its worth enough for cablevision to jump through hoops to find you alternatives.
Pretty sure the actual number of customers who would take advantage of this offer x $10 is much much less than what Fox wants.
Dear Cablevision, Offer to provide your customers with free external roof antennas installed with an automatic switch. You keep your customers happy and you avoid having to pay Fox.
why is FOX and cablevision at each other’s throats it to begin with?
Simple MONEY
Cable companies pay networks a fee for each subscriber they have. These fees are negotiated between the cable provider and the network. The Cabelvision/Fox contract expired, and renegotiations were underway. Fox wanted a significant increase in the fee per subscriber, and Cablevision was not willing to pay that higher fee.
I personally put more fault on FOX for not negotiating in good faith. This is how it seems to be going:
FOX: “We want $X per subscriber.”
Cablevision: “That’s too much. We’ll give you $X-5 per subscriber.”
FOX: “No, we want $X.”
Cablevision: “How about $X-4?”
FOX: “$X”
Cablevision: “How about $X-3?”
FOX: “No…$X”
that’s not negotiating, that’s sticking your fingers in your ears and going “LALALALALALALA” while the other party is trying to find some common ground. Newscorp should be ashamed of themselves.
Hey I have an idea, let me pick what I want to pay for and watch.
If I don’t give a rats ass about Fox, why should I have to pay for it?
On the flip side of this, poor beleaguered Cablevision (which owns MSG) still won’t give Verizon rights to carry MSG HD (not that I give a crap about MSG, the Knicks or Rangers either)… what goes around…
This is a fight between 2 greedy companies, looking for better ways to screw all of us.
Because that will cost you, our valued customer more!!
Sincerely
Cable company CEO
I tend to agree with you, and I would be interested in seeing what Ala Carte , even mini-bundles would cost compared to “Here are 400+ channels”, now pay up.
Thinking of my own family, Mom, Dad & 2 young’ns under 10, we probably watch only about 7 channels on a regular basis, and once in a blue moon a few random channels. I pay about $60/month for “Expanded basic” cable. I would think that ala carte would likely be cheaper if I could order the “Broadcast TV Bundle” which would give me ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX and PBS, I would then order Discovery & Science channels, a couple Home and Garden Channels and that pretty much covers it.
How long will it be until some smart start up begins to offer “Cable programming” by pipe programming in upon the existing cable line or over internet service (regular live programming, not hulu).
I’ve already canned the HBO package and I’m about to kick showtime to the curb. I’m thinking that with all the alternatives, streaming, dvd’s and ahhem “grey” alternatives, pretty soon, the cable companies can just keep the tv side of things.
Cablevision has stated outright that they want to offer a la carte channels but the channel providers dont want to. So do not go spreading false statements.
Or they can buy an antenna and watch it over-the-air in HD.
This is so stupid, Fox won’t cave and Cablevision won’t cave and now they’re using it as a MARKETING PLOY to show how “loyal” they are to their customers? I hate corporate shill speech. Bleh.
The longer it goes on, I am starting to side with the cable company. Let FOX go away if they want. Cablevision should put another channel on whatever one is currently vacant and carry on with their day. Whatever customers leave because of it will be less expensive for them than what Fox is asking ($150mil+ over several years).
Oooo… looks like Cablevision may be winning the propaganda war.
Don’t care about the world series and the only thing I watch on Fox is Hell’s Kitchen and Kitchen Nightmares and I can live without either. And there’s NOTHING on MY9 worth watching at all. If Cablevision really wants to piss off Fox let them pull Fox News Channel. Then all O’Reilly’s buddies in Levittown and the rest of the island won’t be able to see him and I’ll bet that’ll tick off Bill so quickly that he’ll be banging down Murdoch’s door personally.
Kitchen Nightmares (the original, superior-ish UK version – okay, at least it was superior to the first couple Fox seasons) is easily on DVD, fortunately.
Like they’re actually going to honor that come bill time.