Will News Corp. and Cablevision drag out their retransmission fee battle, which already has produced the longest programming blackout in years, into the Oct. 27 start of the World Series-which Fox owns the rights to broadcast?
The two companies, which have been negotiating for months plan to resume negotiations today after brief weekend talks proved fruitless.
Cablevision homes in and around New York city, about 3 million of them, were without the News Corp.-owned Fox Network over the weekend, missing the New York Giants-Detroit Lions game as well as a MLB divisional playoff games.
"These disputes are happening more often and they're lasting for longer periods of time," Derek Baine, an analyst at SNL Kagan to The New York Times.
And while the fight with Cablevision has turned into a doozy, News Corp. is looking down the barrel at a similar fight with Dish Network and its 14 million subscribers, more than three million of whom would be affected if no deal is made by the end of the month.
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