FCC chair Genachowski urges Fox, Time Warner Cable to reach temporary deal for football fans

FCC urges Fox, Time Warner Cable to settle

LOS ANGELES — The nation’s top broadcast regulator on Thursday urged Time Warner Cable and the Fox television network to agree to a temporary deal that would keep football games on cable TV systems as the companies settle differences over fees.

A failure to agree before a midnight Thursday deadline could mean Friday’s Sugar Bowl between the Florida Gators and the Cincinnati Bearcats would be dropped for more than 6 million cable customers in markets such as New York, Los Angeles and Orlando, Fla. The Cotton Bowl on Saturday, the NFL’s final regular season contests on Sunday and “The Simpsons” and other Fox shows were also at risk.

Fox threatened to pull the broadcast signal at midnight in each time zone and began warning cable viewers with a scrawl at the bottom of the screen Thursday night as talks continued down to the wire.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski called for a temporary extension of the expiring deal.

“Companies shouldn’t force cable-watching football fans to scramble for other means of TV delivery on New Year’s weekend,” he said in a statement.

Time Warner Cable is open to a temporary extension, but Fox owner News Corp. has said that would just prolong what it terms an unfair deal.

Separately, Sinclair Broadcasting Group, which owns broadcast stations in markets as large as Des Moines and Cedar Rapids, Iowa, agreed to an eight-day extension for cable TV operator Mediacom Communications Corp. to carry Sinclair’s Fox and CBS stations. Mediacom will pay Sinclair a higher rate than it was paying under a contract that also was expiring at midnight Thursday.

Time Warner Cable Inc. and a smaller cable TV operator, Bright House Networks, have resisted paying a new $1 monthly fee per subscriber that News Corp. is demanding from both operators to retransmit signals from 14 Fox-owned TV stations.

Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt has called the fee demand excessive and said the cable operator has reached deals for “much lower” rates with Fox affiliates — stations that carry Fox programming but are owned by other companies.

Consumers would still be able to get the stations in the affected markets with an antenna if they have a digital TV or converter box, but most Americans these days get broadcast channels through subscription services such as cable TV or satellite.

Besides the Fox broadcast network, cable channels FX, Speed, Fuel, Fox Reality, Fox Soccer and Fox Sports en Espanol and certain regional sports networks were also up for negotiations throughout the Time Warner Cable and Bright House service territories.

Unaffected are Fox News, Fox Business Network and National Geographic, which is partially owned by News Corp. Those three are covered by deals that aren’t expiring yet.

The FCC’s authority to order binding arbitration or a deal extension in these types of disputes is unclear and has never really been tested, according to Paul Gallant, an analyst at Concept Capital.

Rep. Charles Gonzalez, D-Texas, said that if no deal was reached, it could call into question the effectiveness of the 1992 cable law that allowed broadcasters to negotiate for fees from cable and satellite companies. Congress and the FCC might be forced to respond with “swift action,” he said.

Any blackout is likely to be brief, meaning Fox would likely return in time for the “American Idol” season premiere on Jan. 12. Last year, Viacom Inc. threatened to pull Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and other channels from Time Warner Cable in a fee dispute but the two reached a deal in the final hours.

Satellite TV provider Dish Network looked to cash in on the dispute with print, radio and TV ads in markets around the country telling Time Warner Cable costumers, “Don’t risk missing your favorite shows.”

Dish spokeswoman Allyson Mylrea said the satellite provider has seen an uptick in calls from those customers since the dispute became public, but she declined to provide any specific figures.

In case the talks fared poorly, Time Warner Cable was preparing to put up a message in place of the Fox broadcast putting the blame squarely on Fox. Meanwhile, Fox was preparing a fleet of ads on rival ABC, CBS and NBC stations telling viewers about alternative ways of seeing its programming.

Viewers were already preparing for a possible disruption.

In New York, the president of the local Gators alumni association called the group’s official watering hole, the Gin Mill, to make sure the Sugar Bowl game could be seen, said Michael Staff, a manager at the bar.

The bar gets its signal from a satellite hookup, not Time Warner Cable, so it was ready to receive disenfranchised fans.

Thomas Moore, a lawyer and ardent Gators fan from central Florida, tried unsuccessfully this week to get an injunction blocking Fox from pulling its signal. He said he was more upset at Fox than Bright House for the stalemate.

“They don’t really care about the community as much as they would lead you to believe,” he said.

AP Business Writer Andrew Vanacore in New York, AP Writer Mike Schneider in Orlando, Fla., and AP Technology Writer Joelle Tessler in Washington contributed to this report.