Time Warner Cable Drops CBS and Showtime in Dispute

[Dumbledork]

Becasue CBS wants more money and TWC wants to keep their money, TWC is dropping CBS and sister company Showtime until they can come to terms with prices. So no Dexter this Sunday. We don't have cable, we get CBS, NBC, and Fox over the air and watch other stuff online, so this doesn't affect us, but it sucks. If you DO have cable and want CBS, you can still try to get it over the air. 

Also, I keep seeing that CBS is "the most watched network" but I think I watch ABC and Fox a lot more than CBS. I watch The Amazing Race and TBBT regularly, 2 Broke Girls if nothing else is on and I'm bored, and HIMYM online because Bones is on at the same time and it wins. And really, TAR gets pushed around by football and such so much that I usually end up watching it online too. The also recently lost that chick from NCIS, Cote de Pablo is her name I think. I wonder if all this drama will result in it falling from "the most watched network"

tvline.com/2013/08/02/time-warner-cable-drops-cbs-showtime/

If you’re a Time Warner Cable subscriber in a major market, there will be no Blue Bloods for you tonight. And there may be no Dexter come Sunday.

With the cable service provider and CBS failing to reach an agreement in their retransmission deal negotiations — that is, deciding how much TWC will pay CBS, per subscriber, to deliver TV’s most watched network — TWC has dropped not only CBS but its cable sister Showtime.

As reported by our sister site Deadline, TWC subs turning on CBS will be met with a message that says, “CBS has demanded an outrageous increase for programming that CBS delivers free over the air and online” — and then suggests people go old-school and rig an antenna to see the Tiffany Network.

As a “make good” of sorts, TWC will be gifting affected subs with the Starz or Encore channels, on a temporary basis.
CBS in response released a statement about TWC’s “ill-advised action,” that in part reads: “What CBS seeks, and what we always have sought from the beginning, is fair compensation for the most-watched television network with the most popular content in the world. We will not accept less.”

Showtime meanwhile issued a press release saying that TWC’s decision to cut people off from the pay channel, which has no beef with the cable service, “is not only completely unnecessary, but totally punitive to our subscribers.”
Per Deadline, at least one industry analyst says that if TWC “digs in its heels” and doesn’t roll over for CBS — thus losing leverage in similar future deals with other content providers — the result could be “an extended multi-week blackout.”

This marks the first time in history that either CBS or Showtime have been dropped by a service provider. The affected markets include New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, Boston, Tampa, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, Raleigh-Durham, Charlotte, San Diego, Columbus, Cincinnati, Kansas City, Milwaukee, San Antonio, Austin and Detroit.

[agnes]

I wonder if enough people complain to TWC if they'll give away freebies. Especially the people who pay an extra fee for Showtime.

[cabbage10]

Only some CBS markets are losing their channels. Many local CBS affiliates are owned by other companies so not everyone will lose it.

[315]

TWC charges and insane amount of money. I can't get over all the BS they pull when everyone there just isn't satisfied with their bazillions of dollars. These disputes occur from time to time. They try to play it off on the consumer and in the end, we just ended up paying more.

On days like this, I'm so close to cancelling my cable.

[speckledfrog]

We used to have TWC and there was always one channel or another that was in danger of being dropped. We have Uverse now, but there have been ads non-stop for weeks both on the TV and on the radio about them dropping CBS and Showtime.