As some of you living in the United States are already well aware, Time Warner customers are in danger of losing FOX- at least temporarily. The two companies are in bitter negotiations, and normally – I could care less – but in this case I obviously do, as a Time Warner customer:
I am about to get screwed. Big time.
EPL Talk and Avoiding the Drop have summarized and analyzed the situation brilliantly, so I won’t wax poetic for five paragraphs – but basically if Fox and TWC don’t agree on a subscriber fee licensing deal by tomorrow night, Fox Soccer Channel will presumably go dark.
That means no Champions League unless a deal is agreed.
No Premier League. No FA Cup this weekend.
No Serie A.
Who would’ve thought… Just a few months after the amazing August announcement that the Premier League would be shown in HD on ESPN, to the delight of millions of soccer fans in the US, comes this sobering news to end the year that the country’s only 24/7 soccer channel – dedicated only to the beautiful game, could be taken away from us…
Cross your fingers, folks. Cross your fingers.
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Egads! Thanks for the heads up on this. I wasn't aware of this at all, and was just looking at how much I can save on my current TW bill if I lock in a package rate … for 2 years! Rather than locking in, am I going to be getting a ladder out for satellite installation???
These things seem to get resolved at the last minute as usually neither side can afford not to make a deal and it's just a game of chicken as to who is going to get the best of a mutually beneficial deal, but who knows. If there is more to this and TW is going to lose FSC, that's bad on many levels.
It won't happen. TWC "plans" to drop all Fox programming (not just FSC). I don't think they can really afford to do that.
Wilhelmsson –
I hope you are right but I'm not as confident.
There has been a precedent set in the past where cable providers have blacked out stations (even ABC during the famous run of "who wants to be a millionaire" in the '90s) when agreements have not been reached… Cable companies have customer by the balls anyway – so they can really afford to do whatever they want until their is a more feasible alternative..
I think it's somewhere in between but much closer to Ibra's description. Cable companies have some latitude in that they're not going to lose customers immediately, but satellite does provide an alternative for most and they'll eventually start to lose people and/or be unable to recruit certain new people if they don't have certain channels. I wouldn't be surprised at all to see them resolve at the last minute, but I also wouldn't be surprised to see them go dark for a week or two. Especially with it being more than just FSC, I'd be surprised if it lasted for an extended time. TW is banking on Fox not wanting it to go dark and Fox is banking on TW realizing that they can shut it down for a bit but eventually need the programming to compete. Again, it's really just a game of chicken between them and seeing who can get the last few pennies on the table.