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Time Warner Cable And Madison Square Garden Resolve Carriage Impasse

By DAVID LIEBERMAN, Executive Editor | Friday February 17, 2012 @ 12:54pm PSTTags: Glenn Britt, James Dolan, Madison Square Garden, MSG Network, Time Warner Cable

UPDATE, 3:18 PM: MSG just issued a statement saying that it has “a tentative agreement” with Time Warner Cable to carry MSG, MSG+ and Fuse “effective immediately.” The company thanked New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, and NBA Commissioner David Stern. MSG also says that it’s “committed to providing our fans with award-winning programming that continues to warrant their loyalty and allegiance, and we thank them for their patience.” Schneiderman is claiming credit for having “worked diligently with Time Warner Cable and MSG Networks over the last month to bring about a resolution to their dispute.”

PREVIOUS, 1:40 PM: We’ve confirmed that Time Warner Cable will have MSG on for tonight’s game. The No. 2 operator also has agreed to keep carrying Fuse, MSG’s low-rated music channel. MSG would have lost $10M a year in revenue if Time Warner Cable had dropped the channel. But Mike Angus, Time Warner Cable’s SVP Content Acquisition, said in December that fewer than one-tenth of Fuse’s potential viewers tuned in — making MSG’s effort to package it with its popular sports networks “nothing more than a tax on New York sports fans.” 

PREVIOUS, 12:54 PM: New York basketball fans, and owners of Madison Square Garden stock, can rejoice. The 48-day contract dispute that kept regional sports channel MSG off of Time Warner Cable is over — with final terms expected before the New York Knicks’ game tonight with the New Orleans Hornets, Bloomberg reports. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo likely will take a bow. He brought the cable company’s CEO Glenn Britt and MSG chairman Jim Dolan to the table, the New York Times says. MSG shares are up about 3.9% on the news. But much of the credit probably ought to go to New York Knicks point guard Jeremy Lin, whose historic scoring spree made it unthinkable for the team’s games to be unavailable to about 2.5M households — about a third of all the homes that MSG reaches.

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Madison Square Garden Soars As Jeremy Lin Scores

By DAVID LIEBERMAN, Executive Editor | Monday February 13, 2012 @ 10:47am PSTTags: Madison Square Garden Co, MSG Network, Time Warner Cable

The live entertainment and cable network company’s shares are hitting record highs as even non-basketball fans become fascinated with New York Knicks point guard Jeremy Lin’s historic scoring streak. MSG’s at $32.24 in midday trading, up 3.5% vs Friday — and +11.3% so … Read More »

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MSG Networks Vanish From TW Cable

By THE DEADLINE TEAM | Sunday January 1, 2012 @ 12:49pm PSTTags: Cable TV Sports, MSG Network, Time Warner Cable

SUNDAY 12:49 PM, 4TH UPDATE: No progress. The war of words continues with Time Warner saying that the cable system had reached an agreement “last year” to pay MSG the 6.5% price hike it requested at the time. TWC says MSG without warning reneged on that agreement and came back with a new demand for a 53% increase and has refused to budge. Read More »

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Cablevision Finally Gives Up MSG Fight After Court Swats Down Appeal

By DAVID LIEBERMAN, Executive Editor | Thursday December 15, 2011 @ 8:44am PSTTags: AT&T U-Verse, Cablevision, MSG Network, Verizon FiOS

It will be interesting to see whether Cablevision ever discloses how much it spent on legal bills since 2009 to prevent customers of Verizon’s FiOS and AT&T’s U-verse from seeing HD feeds of MSG and MSG+. The regional sports channels are owned by Madison Square Garden, a company that’s controled by the Dolan family which also controls Cablevision. Whatever the cost, it seems to have been for naught: Cablevision today threw in the towel in one of the industry’s longest and most baffling battles after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit denied the company’s appeal of an FCC order in September requiring MSG to provide the HD feeds to two of its toughest competitors. FiOS customers in the New York area began to receive the sports channels in HD today; U-verse should have them soon. Read More »

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Verizon’s Fight To Offer MSG Networks In HD Goes Into Overtime As Cablevision Files Another Appeal

By DAVID LIEBERMAN, Executive Editor | Wednesday November 16, 2011 @ 1:44pm PSTTags: AT&T U-Verse, Cablevision, James Dolan, MSG, MSG Network, Verizon FiOS

One of cable’s most irksome long-running battles isn’t over yet: Cablevision is appealing an FCC order that requires MSG — which the cable operator controls — to offer HD feeds of its two New York regional sports channels to Verizon FiOS and AT&T U-verse. That announcement followed a statement from Verizon today saying that it had “a home-team win in overtime” and promising to offer HD versions of MSG and MSG+ in December to FiOS TV customers in all service packages except FiOS TV Local. The HD feeds are a big deal to fans of the New York Knicks, New York Rangers, New York Islanders, the Buffalo Sabres and the New Jersey Devils.

Cablevision’s appeal continues a dispute that began in 2009 – and that seemed to have reached an end last week. The FCC formally approved a decision from its Media Bureau requiring MSG to deal with FiOS and AT&T, and the federal Second Circuit Court of Appeals refused Cablevision’s request to stay the FCC order. But Cablevision says it is returning to the court for a stay while it seeks a review of the FCC’s orders. “We continue to believe that an unbiased review of the data can only result in one conclusion: that there has been no competitive harm to the nation’s two largest phone companies,” Cablevision says. “In a highly competitive marketplace like New York, a forced sharing of offerings only deters companies from investing and innovating, which hurts both fair competition and consumers.” Read More »

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FCC Ruling Gives Verizon & AT&T Access To MSG’s HD Channels

By THE DEADLINE TEAM | Thursday September 22, 2011 @ 3:31pm PDTTags: AT&T U-Verse, Cablevision, FCC, MSG Network, Verizon, Verizon FiOS

The FCC today has ruled that a pair of high-definition regional sports channels operated by Madison Square Garden must be offered to Verizon’s FiOS and AT&T’s U-Verse video services. The move comes after the phone companies filed a complaint in July … Read More »

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