YES To Be Blacked Out On Cablevision To Start Year

In a surprising bit of news for the millions of subscribers who depend on Cablevision to bring them their Yankees television broadcasts, Cablevision and the YES Network are now at odds over YES’s recently announced deal with Time Warner. The details on that deal are as follows, courtesy of Biz of Baseball:

Time Warner Cable joins Cablevision and Verizon’s FiOS service in the distribution of YES telecasts for viewing live on broadband this season. Registration commences today for the more than six million eligible subscribers of Cablevision, Time Warner Cable and Verizon FiOS. Customers can purchase a package of all of YES’ 127 regular season Yankees telecasts for $69.95, or can pay $19.95 for any 30-day period.

YES Network will allow eligible Time Warner Cable customers to purchase this package and use high-speed Internet access to watch YES’ Yankees telecasts live on their computers throughout the Yankees’ entire home broadcasting territory. They also will be able to watch YES’ Yankees telecasts live on laptops or other portable computers via WiFi. Time Warner Cable has reached an agreement with the YES Network to cooperate with Major League Baseball Advanced Media to ensure that only eligible Time Warner Cable customers may subscribe to the package.

Apparently, Cablevision claims to have reached an agreement with the higher-ups at YES in which they obtained exclusive rights to this package among local cable providers, in return for which they agreed to certain pricing concessions. They later altered that deal to allow Verizon FiOS to sell the package as well, but TIme Warner was deliberately not included in the agreement. Cablevision is claiming that the subsequent Time Warner deal is a clear breach of contract and allows them to take drastic bargaining measures. Here is Cablevision’s VP of Sales, Avril Shtiik:

The YES network reneged upon a carefully tailored agreement that has now been irreparably destroyed by their dealings with Time Warner. YES Network was priced a certain way on our platform due to the exclusive nature of the content. When we allowed that content to be streamed live on the internet, we negotiated to maintain that level of exclusivity. To relinquish it, we required that we receive some financial concessions in return. To simply bypass that agreement and come to terms with Time Warner is an egregious disregard for our agreement that has forced us to take drastic, yet legal, measures. Starting April 4th, 2010, the YES Network will be blacked out on all Cablevision systems and providers, unless an understanding can be reached prior to that point. The blackout will not cease until YES restores Cablevision’s exclusive right to online streaming of Yankee broadcasts. We apologize to our subscribers, but we are certain that once they hear all the facts, they will understand that this was a step Cablevision was forced to take.”

YES fired right back at Cablevision, claiming that their negotiations clearly excluded Time-Warner from any exclusivity agreements, and that the YES-Time Warner agreement was understood by both parties to be an eventuality that was in fact contemplated by their agreement. Senior YES executive Noah Chauntecler has more:

We honestly have no idea what they are referring to and are shocked that this is an issue. We specifically left Time-Warner out of any agreements because it was obvious that we would be coming to a similar agreement with them as well. There are large chunks of New York in which Cablevision is unavailable. Were we really ever going to have all those people miss out on the online streaming capabilities? It is just a myth. But hey, that’s what you get when dealing with the Dolans. Have you seen the Knicks lately? Seriously, though, those people at Cablevision are depriving Yankee fans and they are not going to get away with it. We are not going to cave, but we are going to get people the YES network ASAP. We are working on a way to have Cablevision subscribers deal with MLBAM directly and bypass Cablevision, and should have some sort of system in place by June, maybe July at the latest.”

As many of you know, Time-Warner and Cablevision have long had a rocky relationship, with a major battle occurring over Cablevision-owned MSG network in the middle of the last decade. When reporters suggested that this sort of animosity might be behind this little snafu, Cablevision honcho James Dolan scoffed:

This has nothing to do with the past. One thing I have learned in working with entities such as the Knicks and Rangers is to stick to what you believe in. We believe that we have been wronged, and we are not, under any circumstances, going to back down. And for those of you that think this is just going to go away after some angry phone calls, you are unfortunately mistaken. This is going to be an issue for a long time, until those running the show at YES start treating this seriously. What do they think this is, some sort of joke?

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