Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (May 2, 2000)
Late Night Friday, May 5th llpm-2am at the at the Rec Center Food, ref reshments and prizes! Get your f riends to wrestle in a sumo suit! Fun Includes: ^600 ABCs stations dumped By David Bauder The Associated Press NEW YORK — In an escalating corporate dispute, ABC was blacked out in the homes of 3.5 million Time Warner cable cus tomers around the country Mon day — just as the “sweeps” peri od was beginning and Regis Philbin was about to quiz celebri ties on “Who Wants to Be a Mil lionaire.” Instead of ABC programming, Time Warner customers saw a message saying, “Disney has tak en ABC away from you” on the channel that normally carries WABC-TV in New York. Around the country, the only way many viewers could see ABC shows was the old-fash ioned way — by disconnecting the cable and rigging up an anten na — or finding a friend with a satellite dish. The Walt Disney Co., ABC’s corporate parent, is fighting over how much money Time Warner must compensate Disney for the right to carry some of its cable channels. The affected customers were in seven markets served by ABC owned television stations. About 1.5 million were in the New York City area, 665,000 in Houston and 440,000 in Raleigh-Durham, N.C. Smaller numbers of customers in the Los Angeles; Philadelphia; Toledo, Ohio; and Fresno, Calif., markets also lost service. The blackout was particularly ill-timed for ABC, America’s top rated broadcaster. Its most popu lar show, “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,” began its first celebrity week Monday. Viewers who saw the opening night of the miniseries “Arabian Nights” on Sunday risked missing the con clusion. In the coming weeks, ABC is airing the Kentucky Derby, the Daytime Emmy Awards and vir tually all of the season finales of its regular series. Disney appealed for help from the Federal Communications Commission on Monday. Each side angrily blamed the other for the blackout, and each said FCC law was on its side: Time Warner said it was against the law to carry a station without a transmission deal, while ABC said a cable operator cannot stop airing a broadcast station during a sweeps period. The sweeps, a period when rat ings are used to set local advertis ing rates, began Thursday and runs until May 24. The two sides had no negotia tions scheduled but were to meet with FCC staff members late Monday. Preston Padden, executive vice president of governmental rela tions at Disney, said it was a “damnable lie” to blame Disney for pulling the plug. “These people are arrogant ma nipulators,” Padden said. “Some deranged individual has de prived all of these people of ABC.” Disney had offered a series of deadline extensions after the original national transmission deal expired Dec. 31. The most recent deadline, offered in March, expired at 12:01 a.m. on Monday.
