By David Bauder, Media Writer
NEW YORK (AP) --Both sides of a dispute that has left nearly 15 million cable TV subscribers without ESPN or other networks affiliated with The Walt Disney Co. are directing customers to other services where they can watch television.
The offers speak to the unusual nature of the business dispute between Disney and Charter Communications, and doesn't auger a quick resolution.
Charter is telling its Spectrum TV customers about a special deal being offered by the Fubo live television streaming service to get two months at discounts of 25% or 30%, depending on the plan.
"I've covered carriage disputes for more years than I would like to remember, and I don't recall a TV provider ever offering its customers a discount to another TV provider during a channel blackout," wrote journalist Phillip Swann, who runs tvanswerman.com.
Spectrum had no comment Tuesday on the offer's implications.
Disney, meanwhile, is also offering upset Spectrum customers online links to sign up for other services, like Hulu, Fubo, Sling and YouTubeTV. A Disney representative said that "discussions continue" with Charter and had no other updates.
The business battle resulted in ESPN, ABC, FX, National Geographic and Disney-branded stations going abruptly dark on Thursday night for Charter's Spectrum TV subscribers. ABC-TV was also cut in seven markets, including New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.
Carriage disputes, involving what cable or satellite customers will pay to carry specific networks on their systems, are not uncommon.
Yet Charter is arguing that the number of people cutting off their cable subscriptions over the past few years means the business is changing rapidly, and any new deal must reflect that. It wants Disney to give customers more flexibility to restrict "bundling," which requires them to pay for networks they don't necessarily want. It also wants Disney to offer its ad-supported streaming services for free as part of the deal, saying it has moved some of its best TV programming over to streaming.
Charter, which has broadband as well as cable customers, is anticipating a day when ESPN transitions to a direct-to-consumer streaming service, said analyst Rich Greenfield of Lightshed Partners.
"Could this end up being a watershed event for the linear TV business that also blows up the entire sports media ecosystem?" Greenfield wrote in an analysis. "Sure. However, we have lived through enough of these battles to know that they usually end in an agreement."
Harvey Weinstein hit with new sex crime charge in New York
Harvey Weinstein pleaded not guilty Wednesday to a new sex crime charge in New York, as he awaits retrial in his landmark #MeToo case.
Details of the new allegations were not immediately available. He was charged with committing a criminal sex act.
The jailed ex-movie mogul has long maintained that any sexual activity was consensual.
Prosecutors revealed last week that Weinstein had been indicted on additional sex crime charges that weren't part of the case that led to his now-overturned 2020 conviction. But the new indictment was sealed until his arraignment.
Prosecutors have said that the grand jury heard evidence of up to three alleged assaults — two in hotels in the Tribeca neighborhood and one at a lower Manhattan residential building. The purported incidents took place from the mid-2000s to 2016, prosecutors said.
But it's not clear whether any of those allegations underlie the new indictment.
While bracing for the new charges, Weinstein also is awaiting retrial after New York state's highest court this spring overturned his 2020 conviction on rape and sexual assault charges involving two women. The high court, called the Court of Appeals, ordered a new trial, which is tentatively scheduled to begin Nov. 12.
The Court of Appeals ruled that the then-trial judge unfairly allowed testimony against him based on allegations that were not part of the case. That judge's term expired in 2022, and he is no longer on the bench.
Prosecutors have said they'll seek to fold the new charges into the retrial, but Weinstein's lawyers say it should be a separate case.
Weinstein, who also was convicted in 2022 in a Los Angeles rape case, remains behind bars while awaiting his New York retrial.
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