Cable Customers Held Hostage

Many cable customers were cheated out of Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin's opening monologue at the Oscars on ABC7, all over an unsettled deal between The Walt Disney Company and Cablevision. Both companies naturally blamed the other: Disney stated that Cablevision charges customers every month for the "basic package" which includes ABC: Cablevision argued that they already pay Disney $200 million, and they were asking for $40 million more. Both companies continued this dispute on television: if you were a Cablevision customer and turned on your t.v. you saw and heard a 4 minute long message saying how ABC is demanding unfair amounts of money: on ABC there was a screen ticker on the bottom saying you may lose this channel on March 7th, which so happened to be the same day of the Oscars. What it really comes down to is the cable customers don't care about the companies business issues, they just want to keep their channel with their favorite shows.

ABC is a traditional broadcast channel, which means you can technically get it for free if you have a t.v. antenna, so why all the fuss over money; because, Cablevision charges their customers for basic cable. Disney claimed they weren't receiving any money off the money Cablevision was profiting from their customers.

Cablevision had a similar dispute at the beginning of the year with Scripps Networks which ran channels HGTV and Food Network. Both channels were pulled for almost a week while the companies worked out an agreement. So when Cablevision customers were hit with another threat of a channel being taken off the air, ABC decided to use this tactic of actually suggesting to Cablevision customers to change their cable company:

Cablevision argued that ABC is available free with an antenna or online. They ran this long message about The Walt Disney Company, claiming that it was asking for more money because all their theme parks around the world were having financial difficulties:

Once midnight came ABC pulled the network, 20 hours before the Oscars were to air. Over 3 million people missed the first 20 minutes of the Oscars, before it finally was switched back on before the first award was presented. The NY Times says in an article that the switch came a little late for some customers who had made other plans to watch the show.

Cable customers were being used as hostages while Cablevision and The Walt Disney Company were struggling to negotiate a deal. Customers were asked to take sides and told to switch to other cable services. Both companies were using popular media tactics such as Facebook and Twitter to rally supporters in hopes that they would force the other side the "cave in". What it all comes down to is this: loyal customers and viewers should not be put in this situation; the companies should have worked out their problems behind the scenes, and everyone would have been happier.