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Change Your Life! |
Millions of viewers without ABC network |
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News |
May 3, 2000
NEW YORK, MAY 2 (AP) - A nasty corporate dispute has accomplished what none of ABC's rivals could do: force millions of viewers to watch something other than "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire."
An estimated 3.5 million Time Warner cable customers were in their second day without ABC programming Tuesday after missing the first celebrity edition of the hit game show in prime-time Monday night.
Instead of "Millionaire" host Regis Philbin, Time Warner customers found a message saying, "Disney has taken ABC away from you" on the channel that normally carries WABC-TV in New York.
The Walt Disney Co., ABC's corporate parent, is fighting over how much money Time Warner must compensate Disney for the right to carry some of its cable channels. The blackout comes during a key ratings measuring period.
The affected customers are in seven markets served by ABC-owned television stations. About 1.5 million were in the New York City area, 665,000 in Houston and 440,000 in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina.
Smaller numbers of customers in the Los Angeles; Philadelphia; Toledo, Ohio; and Fresno, California, markets also lost service.
"This could last for six months," said Jon Mandel, an analyst for Grey Advertising in New York, "because both of them are right and both of them are wrong.
"These are huge media companies - this isn't about New York or this year. This is about the future of this business. They both need each other and neither of them want to be the one admitting it."
Political and economic pressure makes a long wait doubtful. But both companies are trading unusually bitter rhetoric, and Time Warner has offered to reimburse customers for the cost of switching to an antenna for ABC shows. Disney is considering giving a rebate to customers who get a satellite dish.
The blackout was particularly ill-timed for ABC, America's top-rated broadcaster. In addition to the "Millionaire" celebrity week, many viewers who saw the opening night of the miniseries "Arabian Nights" on Sunday couldn't see its conclusion Monday.
In the coming weeks, ABC is airing the Kentucky Derby, the Daytime Emmy Awards and virtually all of the season finales of its regular series.
In Raleigh, North Carolina, Dave and Connie Westfall went to a Radio Shack electronics store on Monday to buy a rabbit-ear antenna set.
"I'm furious," Connie Westfall said. "I can't believe it. But now that I have this, we can watch Regis."
Disney appealed for help from the Federal Communications Commission on Monday, but the commission offered no immediate relief.
Each side said FCC law was on its side: Time Warner said it was against the law to carry a station without a transmission deal, while ABC said a cable operator cannot stop airing a broadcast station during a sweeps period.
The sweeps, a period when ratings are used to set local advertising rates, began Thursday and run until May 24.
Disney had offered a series of deadline extensions after the original national transmission deal expired Dec. 31. The most recent deadline, offered in March, expired at 12:01 a.m. Monday.
Time Warner said Disney's demands to carry the Disney Channel and separate cartoon and soap opera networks on its system would have added dlrs 300 million in costs to its customers; Disney said it had offered a fair market price.
"It's abundantly clear to anybody who understands the real situation - this is about extorting money from cable customers," said Michael Luftman, Time Warner spokesman.
Preston Padden, executive vice president of governmental relations at Disney, said it was a "damnable lie" to blame Disney for pulling the plug.
"These people are arrogant manipulators," Padden said. "Some deranged individual has deprived all of these people of ABC."
Since the blackout affects less than 4 percent of the nation's 100 million TV homes, the dispute isn't likely to shake ABC's hold on the top spot in the season's ratings, Mandel said. But advertisers are expected to demand ABC compensate them for the lost customers.
"This is an example of what happens when you allow monopolies to get too big and they become too predatory and then the consumer is hurt," New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said. "For the life of me, I can't figure out why the Justice Department has spent so much time on Microsoft and so little on this industry."
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