Time Warner, Walt Disney come to carriage terms

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There will be no disruption of service to Time Warner Cable subscribers in regards to programming supplied by ESPN and ABC Television parent Walt Disney Company. The two media giants are said to have an agreement on a new carriage contract.


According to the New York Post, an accord has been reached between the two companies ahead of the expiration date of their old contract. The deal is being run past each corporation’s set of attorneys, and it is not expected that they will uncover any snags.

The beginning of the new NFL football season, just over a week in the future, will be the negotiating football generating the most public howling should the deal fall through.

RBR-TVBR observation: We’ve commented on how cable operators don’t usually beg for government intervention when they are negotiating carriage terms with cable programmers – since most big cable operators are cable programmers as well, that’s water they can’t afford to muddy.

Here’s the other side of the coin – no matter how contentious negotiations get, they are almost always resolved on time – neither side wants to lose money during a prolonged stalemate. This is true of cable system/broadcaster retransmission negotiations as well, and is another reason that government intervention is unnecessary.