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TV's old, new worlds on display as cable dispute closes, Apple may reveal new option for viewers [The Dallas Morning News](Dallas Morning News (TX) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Sept. 01--Today could be a big day for television aficionados. Time Warner Cable Inc. and Walt Disney Co. are expected to agree on new terms for the cable provider to carry ESPN and other Disney-owned channels, and Apple could unveil a new online TV-show rental service. Those two headlines from the old and new worlds of television illustrate the growing burdens and opportunities for the average couch potato. The squabble between Time Warner and Disney isn't just a chance to watch a pair of billion-dollar behemoths mud-wrestle over a few more dollars. Well, it is that, but it's also the latest round in a slugfest that is driving your monthly cable bill ever higher. According to research firm SNL Kagan, Disney charges cable providers such as Time Warner $4.08 a month per subscriber for the rights to broadcast ESPN. The industry average is 20 cents per subscriber. Time Warner has about 14 million TV and Internet subscribers, including about 2 million in Texas. It's the second-largest cable TV company, behind Comcast Corp. While neither side is talking specific numbers, Time Warner will probably end up paying more for the Disney content. The existing agreement expires at 12:01 a.m. Thursday, and if no deal is reached, the affected channels would be turned off for Time Warner subscribers until a new deal is reached. This fight is not an isolated incident. Last year, Time Warner was in a similar dispute with News Corp. over its family of Fox stations that threatened broadcasts of Cowboys games in Dallas, and Cablevision Systems Co. and Disney didn't hammer out a new deal in March until millions of customers in New York saw the first few minutes of the Academy Awards blacked out. AT&T Inc.'s agreement to carry Crown Media Holdings Inc.'s Hallmark and Hallmark Movie channels expired Tuesday night with no update on the status of negotiations. In July, AT&T reached a last-minute deal with Rainbow Media to continue carrying AMC and other Rainbow channels on AT&T's U-verse television service. Cable providers and content producers accuse each other of being unreasonable and hurting consumers. But each time, deals eventually get hammered out. Time Warner and Disney said they had made "significant progress" over the weekend and "are now focusing all our attention on a successful conclusion of these efforts prior to the Sept. 2 deadline." But just because the channels stay on the air doesn't mean TV watchers are winning. "I think invariably it's going to lead to higher cable bills," said Kurt Scherf, principal analyst with Dallas-based research firm Parks Associates. According to Yankee Group Research Inc., the average monthly pay TV bill in the U.S. is about $65 and increasing 5 percent annually. "As the relationship between programmers and pay-TV operators strains, there appears to be no end in sight to programming cost increases," the company said in a report this week. Those ever-increasing prices could be pushing some subscribers to cancel their cable. Pay-TV companies in the U.S. lost a net of 216,000 subscribers in the second quarter of 2010, down to 100 million, compared with a net gain of 378,000 in the second quarter of 2009, according to SNL Kagan. Many of those fleeing subscribers have options for getting their TV fix that they didn't have just a few years ago. Among those who own a computer, Yankee Group found, 31 percent said they now watch videos on their PC or laptop at least once a day. And 16 percent of video-game console owners said they watch videos on their Internet-connected game machines at least once a day. Sony Corp., Microsoft Corp. and Nintendo Co. now all have video services on their game machines, and Microsoft will soon stream live events from ESPN to the Xbox 360 consoles of customers with participating Internet service providers. Among people who own a high-definition television, Yankee Group reported, 13 percent of those surveyed this year said they had downloaded or streamed HD video from the Internet to their television. Last year, only 7 percent of HD television owners had done so. Much of that capability is coming from TV makers who are installing video streaming software directly on their Internet-capable sets, using services from companies such as YouTube, Netflix and Dallas-based Blockbuster Inc. That technology -- streaming Internet videos directly to your television -- is where experts think Apple might make a splash. The company is holding a press event today to unveil its latest batch of new products, and many insiders predict a set-top box that runs the same operating system as the iPhone, can download apps and, most important, stream or download TV shows for 99 cents apiece. Parks Associates' Scherf said that if Apple really wants to revolutionize the video delivery business, it will have to position the new device and service to a mass market, as it did with the iPhone, rather than to a small niche, as it did with its barely discussed Apple TV. Scherf said he thinks people will be slower to cut their cable TV than they were to cut their land-line phones. But cable providers and broadcasters could ignite the trend if they take their brinksmanship too far and popular channels go dark for extended periods. "The dumbest thing that could happen here is that they allow this to occur right before college football season starts," Scherf said. "I want my ESPN." To see more of The Dallas Morning News, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.dallasnews.com. Copyright (c) 2010, The Dallas Morning News Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For more information about the content services offered by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services (MCT), visit www.mctinfoservices.com, e-mail [email protected], or call 866-280-5210 (outside the United States, call +1 312-222-4544) |