Image from Americanidol.com and Edited by Joel McLaughlin

Another year has gone by and another set of networks is trying to charge more to the cable providers for their content.  Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp, parent company of FX, Fox News Channel and of course Fox owned Fox affiliates, now wants a dollar per subscriber for letting Time Warner to carrier these broadcast affiliates that Time Warner used to get for free.   Without a deal, these networks will go dark as you ring in the New Year.  Amy Zunk informs me that this also affects Bright House Networks customers as well.

Time Warner is also getting asked to pay more for Scripps Networks Interactive owned cable channels.  That would include Food Network, the Travel Channel, HGTV, DIY, Fine Living, Great American Country, Shopzilla and uSwitch.  The exact figure isn’t known on these networks, but I would pay an extra dollar a month for Food Network alone.  The others, not so much.  It’s also not clear when these networks will go dark if a deal has not been reached.

With the increase in use of Hulu and streaming by the networks themselves, does this matter?  I say yes, because unlike most of the staff hear at Gear Diary, there are still a lot of people who don’t even have broadband.  Plus with the News Corp channels involving Local Affiliates it’s even worse then Viacom’s issues last year with Nickelodeon.  All of this may not matter since Fox Entertainment Group (also owned by News Corp) wants you to pay for Hulu TOO!

This also could affect public safety reducing the amount of channels that viewers can get important information about the weather and other civil defense matters.  All I know is both Cable TV and the cable networks better get their act together, and figure out a way for these networks to work in the current climate or they risk rampant piracy via Bit Torrent and other P2P networks.

The one good thing with this is that Time Warner actually wants to know what the viewers want.  Do you want them to roll over to News Corp’s demands?  Go to the rolloverorgettough.com website and let them know your opinion.