Time Warner Cable, Disney appear close to deal
McALLEN — Time Warner Cable and the Walt Disney Co. appear to be close to an agreement after months of heated negotiation over how much the cable giant will pay to air ESPN.
Both sides pulled negative advertising this weekend, and Time Warner posted a statement on its corporate blog headlined “We’ve made progress with Disney, working together to beat the deadline.”
Without a deal, Disney had threatened to remove ESPN, ABC and other channels from Time Warner’s network Thursday, when their contract expired.
Negotiation over the new contract grew increasingly nasty this summer, with Disney unveiling a ihavechoices.com, a website suggesting Time Warner customers switch to another TV provider or risk losing Disney channels.
Time Warner revived its “roll over or get tough” campaign, which warns customers that any concessions by Time Warner will mean higher prices for cable TV.
On Friday, Bloomberg reported that negotiations over espn3.com had held up the talks. Disney wanted Time Warner to pay 10 cents a month per customer for the site, Bloomberg reported citing “two people with knowledge of the talks.”
Both people asked the news agency not to be identified because the talks are ongoing.
Time Warner operates across the Rio Grande Valley, serving McAllen, Harlingen and Brownsville.
Texas is a top-five market for the cable company, which operates in 28 states, according to its latest filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It’s the nation’s second-largest cable company.
About 12.7 million people subscribe to cable TV through Time Warner. The company expects that number to fall, but profits to increase as consumers buy more “incremental video services” such as digital video recorders.
Cities across Texas have their own beef with Time Warner over the company’s plans to digitize public and government information channels across the state. McAllen helped organize an informal coalition to fight the move and recently hired a Washington lawyer to represent the city.
