TWC Drops NFL Network HD for Adelphia Customers

[dkennedy]

Adelphia switches to Time Warner this week

July 30, 2006

By Gregory Bacon, The Observer (Buffalo, NY)

Dunkirk residents and a number of other communities who receive Adelphia Cable will be switched to Time Warner beginning Tuesday, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to see much difference.

“We anticipate to close on the acquisition on July 31,” Brian Wirth, a Time Warner spokesman said during a telephone interview. “Once the acquisition is closed, Time Warner will assume ownership.”

Wirth said immediately customers won’t notice much of a change.

“It should be relatively seamless to customers,” he said. “There may be one or two minor changes, but for the most part people will continue to see the same programming that they’ve seen in the past except for HD.”

HD Sports fans may have a little bit to gripe about.

Gordon Harp, Time Warner’s Buffalo division president, sent a letter to Dunkirk City Cable Advisory Board Chairman Danny McGill notifying him Adelphia customers will no longer be able to get the NFL Network, NFL Network HD and ESPN-U HD.

The NFL Network HD is a 24-hour network devoted to professional football. It broadcasts mostly football news and highlights. Beginning Thanksgiving it will broadcast seven live games on either Thursdays or Saturdays.

None will be Buffalo Bills games. The channel will also broadcast 52 pre-season games beginning Aug. 11. A handful of those games will be live. Most, including all four Buffalo Bills pre-season games, will be tape-delayed.

ESPN-U HD is a 24-hour college sports network which features event programming, highlighted by approximately 300 live games, including both regular season and championship matches. The network’s coverage includes a variety of top Division I football and men's and women's basketball mixed with baseball, softball, volleyball, lacrosse, hockey, wrestling and other sports.

Beyond that, it does not appear there will be any noticeable differences.

“We’re going to be going through a transitional process so customers shouldn’t notice anything different,” said Wirth.

In Harp’s letter, he emphasized that Time Warner will work hard to serve its new customers. “At Time Warner Cable, we pride ourselves on providing innovative products and services at a great value while being a good corporate citizen. We’ve been serving customers across America for over 38 years,” he said.

Adelphia serves many municipalities throughout the region. Besides Dunkirk, Adelphia serves Silver Creek, Forestville, parts of Portland, Westfield, Mayville, Ripley, Gowanda and Perrysburg.

Municipalities that currently have Time Warner include Fredonia, Pomfret, Cassadaga, Stockton, Brocton, part of Portland , Sinclairville and Cherry Creek.

From an organizational standpoint, Time Warner will have its new Buffalo Division oversee all the municipalities that previously were served by Adelphia. The other municipalities that already had Time Warner will stay under the Binghamton/Syracuse Division. Because of that leadership difference, neighboring communities will have slightly different cable line-ups and prices.

For example, in Fredonia’s standard package, customers get 76 channels, while Dunkirk’s “Adelphia Classic Cable” offers 74 channels. Fredonia customers pay $47.49 a month while Dunkirk customers are charged $52.09 a month. This does not include taxes or franchise fees.

Fifty-seven channels are offered in both packages. Fredonia also receives the Speed Channel, ESPN Classic, The Golf Channel, SportsNet New York, SOAPnet, Women’s Entertainment, fuse, Bravo and Fit TV.

Dunkirk customers don’t get those channels on their classic cable package, but do get the NFL Network, Oxygen and Black Entertainment Television, which Fredonia does not.

The regional channels vary as well. Fredonia customers receive Cable 8 News, CHCH Ontario, CKGN Ontario and CFTO Ontario, and Dunkirk customers don’t. Dunkirk customers receive CTV Toronto, WPIX WB New York, CIII Global, WSEE CBS Erie, WPXJ Batavia and WNGS Springville, all which aren’t received in Fredonia’s standard cable line-up.

Because the new Time Warner division won’t oversee current Time Warner customers, the public access channels are not expected to change. It took years for Fredonia to negotiate a cable contract with Time Warner the last time it was approved.

McGill, with the city Cable Advisory Board, said he wished Adelphia hadn’t gotten itself into legal problems and went into bankruptcy. “Nobody treated us better than the people of Adelphia,” he said.

Still, McGill said he’s ready to work with Time Warner. “I want to give them a chance and see what happens,” he said.

[dkennedy]

Local NFL Fans Lose Network in Fee Dispute

Newly converted Time Warner Cable customers are upset. League-owned channel files complaint.

August 2, 2006

By Larry Stewart, Los Angeles Times

Time Warner Cable pulled the NFL Network out of its lineup without warning Tuesday because of a fee dispute, taking the network away from at least 1.6 million households in the Los Angeles area.

In turn, NFL Network on Tuesday filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission, asking that Time Warner be required to restore a carriage agreement for 30 days. The network contends that when Time Warner abruptly dropped it from its programming, federal rules were violated.

The move against the league-owned network comes one day after Time Warner Inc. and Comcast Corp. completed the purchase of Adelphia Communications Corp., which had filed for bankruptcy protection in 2002.

With the purchase, Time Warner now controls Adelphia's 1.1 million cable households in the L.A. region and, in an asset swap, Comcast's 500,000 households here.

A number of these subscribers were unhappy about losing NFL Network, which this season will offer 52 preseason games and eight regular-season games.

Richard Medina of Buena Park, previously an Adelphia subscriber, was one of them.

"We get a channel that shows us how to hang wallpaper, but we can't get a channel that televises preseason NFL games," Medina said, adding that he had been looking forward to seeing former USC stars Reggie Bush and Matt Leinart with their NFL teams.

Time Warner Cable, which had been servicing 360,000 homes in the L.A. market, has been unable to come to terms on a carriage agreement, contending NFL Network is asking for a 350% fee hike, mostly for the new eight-game package that kicks in Thanksgiving Day.

NFL Network denies the fee hike is that high, although spokesman Seth Palansky declined to discuss numbers.

He said the crux of the dispute, instead, is Time Warner's desire to put NFL Network on a digital pay tier. The network is demanding it be allowed to remain part of the basic cable package to reach as many households as possible.

A wider distribution enables NFL Network to charge more for advertising.

With Monday's merger, Time Warner, Charter and Cox now control the majority of the L.A. cable market — 52% of 5.3 million households. DirectTV and Dish Network control the satellite market, which represents 28%. NFL Network also does not have a carriage deal with Charter, but does with the other three.

Nationally, the 2 1/2 -year-old network has been able to reach agreements with cable and satellite companies that reach 65 million of the 91 million pay-television households. There are 26 million U.S. homes serviced by cable companies that don't have a deal with NFL Network, and 15 million are Time Warner homes.

Patti Rockenwagner, a spokeswoman for Time Warner Cable in L.A., said her company would like to reach a deal.

"We have offered to carry NFL Network on our sports tier, similar to the way the network has been offered to many Comcast and Adelphia customers in the past," she said. "What NFL Network is asking for is a 350% increase in rates for [essentially] eight games. That's not a reasonable value for our customers.

"Our customers will still be able to watch more than 100 regular-season games on CBS, Fox, NBC and ESPN — all available in high definition," she said. "Of the preseason games NFL Network is offering, 87% are on tape delay."

Indeed, of the 52 preseason games — the first of which airs Aug. 11 — only six will be carried live, but only because the network cannot show more than one game at a time. Nineteen will be in high definition. There also will be midweek replays of four games — two on Tuesdays and two on Wednesdays — plus its usual round-the-clock NFL-related programming.

Said Palansky of Time Warner, "This is a company that is desperate to divert the issue of removing a channel you subscribed to without any advance notice."

Neither Palansky nor Rockenwagner would discuss the subscriber fees NFL Network is asking, but the Sports Business Journal said the fees have gone from 25 to 35 cents per subscriber per month to 85 to 95 cents, and that there is a $2 surcharge for cable companies such as Time Warner that want to put the network on a digital pay tier.

Palansky said the network's West Coast headquarters in Culver City was swamped with complaints. The Times also received a number of complaint calls.

Medina, the former Adelphia subscriber, said he got a message on Channel 178, which previously carried NFL Network, that in part read: "Nice to meet you. Hello, my name is Time Warner Cable." And there was a scroll that told viewers the NFL Network was "asking you to pay a premium for eight out-of-market games you got free last year. We are negotiating a deal for you."

Les Haan of Bellflower, previously a Comcast subscriber, said Channel 244 on his system began running a warning from NFL Network on Saturday.

Haan said he called Time Warner on Tuesday to complain, but got no satisfaction.

"DirecTV is coming to install a new system on Saturday," he said. "Time Warner just lost a customer."

[dkennedy]

NFL, Time Warner Reach Extension

September 1, 2006

By Steve Donohue, Multichannel News

NFL Network and Time Warner Cable reached an agreement that will see Time Warner continue to distribute the channel on systems it acquired from Adelphia Communications and Comcast until Sept. 15, officials said Friday.

Time Warner had planned to drop NFL Network Saturday at midnight – a move that would have impacted more than 1 million former Adelphia and Comcast subscribers that receive the channel under deals Adelphia and Comcast reached previously with the NFL.

“The encouraging thing is yesterday [Thursday], for the first time, discussions took place about leaving this channel up in the interim, and we can get back to the negotiating table,” NFL spokesman Seth Palansky said Friday.