Are you ready for some football?
Less than a week before the kickoff of the NFL season, Time Warner Cable yesterday cut a deal with CBS to resume carrying the network’s programming.
The agreement ended a blackout that began Aug. 3, when TWC balked at CBS’s demand for a monthly, $2-per-customer fee — up from an earlier charge estimated at between 50 and 75 cents.
Terms of the new pact weren’t revealed, but any increased costs are expected to be passed on to cable subscribers in the form of higher monthly bills.
The corporate standoff affected more than 3 million Time Warner Cable customers across the country who weren’t able to watch CBS, CBS Sports, several Showtime channels and the Smithsonian Channel.
Programming returned last night.
In a statement, Time Warner Cable Chairman and CEO Glenn Britt expressed appreciation for viewers’ “patience and loyalty.”
“As in all of our negotiations, we wanted to hold down costs and retain our ability to deliver a great video experience for our customers,” he said.
“While we certainly didn’t get everything we wanted, ultimately, we ended up in a much better place than when we started.”
In a memo to CBS employees, company CEO Leslie Moonves said, “This was a far more protracted dispute than anyone at CBS anticipated, but in spite of the pain it caused to all of us, and, most importantly, the inconvenience to our viewers who were affected, it was an important one, and one worth pursuing to a satisfactory conclusion.”
Moonves said the network will be “receiving fair compensation for CBS content, and we also have the ability to monetize our content going forward on all the new, developing platforms that are right now transforming the way people watch television.”
In addition to the “carriage fee,” a major bone of contention between the companies was which side would control digital rights to programming available over the Internet.
Moonves’ memo suggests that CBS — which had irked Time Warner Cable by making some shows available for free over the Internet — will retain the ability to sell the digital rights.
Time Warner Cable, meanwhile, will restore “video on demand” access to certain CBS shows, although it was unclear whether that would include full and past seasons, or access through iPads or other mobile devices.
Acting FCC Chairwoman Mignon Clyburn said she was pleased by the resolution of the impasse, “which for too long . . . deprived millions of consumers of access to CBS programming.”