Posted by Community on November 05, 2010 at 15:24:31:
Posted today at 10:39 a.m.
By Steve Cavendish
AT&T’s U-verse service dropped Food Network, HGTV, Cooking Channel and other Scripps networks from its lineup Friday morning after the two sides could not reach a carriage agreement.
The channels were immediately replaced on thousands of U-verse customers’ receivers in the Chicago area.
Food Network and HGTV are among the most popular niche networks on cable, with their most popular shows reaching millions of viewers.
The apparent hangup is U-verse’s desire to deliver Scripps video via other means than just television. As the number of eyeballs watching programming via mobile devices has increased, cable companies have sought to be the providers of that video.
“Let me start by saying this impasse is not about money,” said John Lansing, president of Scripps Networks. “We reached an agreement in principle with AT&T U-verse on the distribution fees we would receive for these networks well in advance of last month’s contract deadline.”
“AT&T U-verse demanded unreasonably broad video rights for emerging media where business models have not even been established,” Lansing said. “Accepting their demands would have restrained our ability to deliver our content to our viewers in new and innovative ways.”
A statement from AT&T denied this, claiming that Scripps was offering “inferior access to their content for our customers on other platforms, even though other competitors get this at much lower prices. With such an uneven playing field, they are harming AT&T’s ability to provide customers with a new video choice.”
The two sides had negotiated past their Oct. 31 deadline and as recently as Wednesday a spokesman for U-verse told The Tribune that he remained optimistic that a deal would be done. The deal had featured none of the antagonism that Scripps high-profile negotiation with Cablevision had earlier this year when the New York cable system dropped the network for three weeks. Scripps waged a very visible PR campaign before and after that deadline.
What this means for Food Network, HGTV and other fans of Scripps networks (including Great American Country and DIY network) who subscribe to U-verse is that they are out of luck for time being as the two sides slug it out.
AT&T’s iptv service is one of the top 10 video providers in the country with 2.7 million subscribers. U-verse began an aggressive campaign in the Chicago suburbs almost two years ago and claims to be available to more than a million households in the area.