The carriage battle between Turner Broadcasting System and Cable One is heating up, with the media giant deauthorizing signals for three networks the mid-sized MSO believed it had secured through a separate deal, darkening the entire Turner cable portfolio to its nearly 600,000 video subscribers hours just before the first pitch of the Major League Baseball playoffs.
"Cable ONE has been in negotiations to renew our contract with Turner Network for the past several months and we have made every effort to reach a fair deal," Cable One CEO Tom Might said in a statement. "However, Turner has demanded an increase of nearly 50% for channels with steadily declining ratings. Since we were unable to reach a fair deal with Turner, we've been forced to drop these channels from our channel line-up."
CableOne had originally thought it had secured three top Turner channels - TBS, TNT and Cartoon Network - through a separate carriage deal through with the National Cable Television Co-operative, a programming and hardware purchasing group for smaller cable operators. But according to representatives from Turner, Cable One was informed that it had lost access to those networks as well.
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