ABC ya later!
As the alphabet network yanked its signal from Cablevision early this morning, ABC this afternoon put forward a new proposal that could end the nasty dispute, and the cable company offered to send the impasse to arbitration with a third party.
“We have sent Cablevision a new proposal, and are awaiting their response,” the network said in a statement released this afternoon. “The ball is in their court.”
Cablevision fired back in its offer to go to binding arbitration, saying, “We remain deeply disappointed that ABC Disney has put their own financial interests above their viewers and pulled the plug on ABC.”
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More than 3 million subscribers in the tri-state area may miss tonight’s Oscars broadcast — one of the year’s most-watched programs.
“Cablevision has betrayed you again,” read a message that scrolled across the screen two minutes before midnight, as the hit show “Lost” was being broadcast.
“First you lost HGTV and Food Network and now you’ve lost ABC-7,” it continued, referring to a dispute earlier this year that kept the popular cable channels off Cablevision for about three weeks.
“Enough is enough!”
Then, at 12:01 a.m., WABC/Channel 7 went blank on Cablevision, leaving customers fuming.
“I don’t know what to say,” said Plainview, LI, resident Stu Wolff.
“I can’t watch the Oscars, it’s the biggest show of the year and I’ll have to drive to Queens to watch it at my father’s,” Wolff, 44, added.
Cablevision countered in a statement that WABC, which is owned by Disney, was being greedy and holding its viewers “hostage.”
“It is now painfully clear that Disney CEO Bob Iger will hold his own viewers hostage in order to extract $40 million in new fees from Cablevision,” said the company’s spokesman Charles Schueler.
“We are working hard to get ABC back on the air,” a screen message from the cable provider said at around 12:20 a.m.
Negotiations were continuing early this morning and the ABC signal could return to Cablevision at any time. WABC can still be viewed with an antenna and a new TV or digital converter box, but most cable subscribers don’t have such a box.
Later, Cablevision tried to console viewers by advising them to “watch ABC programming at hulu.com or abc.com.”
At issue is Disney’s request to collect $40 million in fees to broadcast ABC’s signal, which it had been given to the cable provider for free. Schueler said Cablevision already paid $200 million a year to Disney for its programming.
The two sides have been negotiating for two years since their last contract expired and extended their deal month by month as long as talks continued.
But a spokeswoman for Disney said the cable giant, owned by Knicks and Rangers mogul James Dolan, earned almost $8 billion last year and doesn’t pass along the money it received from charging customers $18 a month for basic broadcast signals.
Viewers, however, weren’t interested in those details, only that they might be missing the Oscars and their favorite shows.
“The consumer is the one getting screwed,” said Jim Medler, 43, of Bronxville, NY.