Cablevisión

In 2004 and 2005, Cablevision provided funding for an advertising campaign against the proposed construction of a stadium on the West Side of Manhattan supported by the Mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg. The stadium would have principally served the New York Jets, and was an essential part of New York City's failed bid for the 2012 Olympics. Cablevision had offered a competitive bid that far exceeded the bid of the Jets for property owned by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, where the new stadium would have been located. The plans to build the stadium were abandoned in June 2005 when the New York State Assembly under the leadership of Speaker Sheldon Silver refused to provide state subsidies for the project.

In 1998, Cablevision helped found The Lustgarten Foundation, which has become the largest private foundation dedicated solely to funding pancreatic cancerresearch in America.^[17] The foundation was named after former Cablevision chairman Marc Lustgarten and has raised over $16 million. Cablevision currently underwrites the foundation, covering all administrative and fundraising costs, allowing 100% of all donations to go directly to research programs and grants to help cure pancreatic cancer, as well as sponsoring dozens of walks/runs across the country.^[18] The foundation is a 4-star charity on Charity Navigator, ranking at this level for its organizational and financial transparency, low administrative costs, board, and growth.^[19]

On July 1, 2011, Cablevision spun off its subsidiary, formerly known as Rainbow Media LLC, into a new company named AMC Networks, now known today as AMC Global Media. It owns several national cable networks including AMC, IFC, Sundance Channel, and WE tv. Wedding Central, a cable channel that was launched as a spin-off of WE tv in 2009, was also run by Rainbow Media. However, upon AMC Networks achieving its independence of Cablevision, the channel was shut down due to low ratings.^[27] Rainbow Media also controlled Fuse TV until 2010, when ownership was transferred to Cablevision's Madison Square Garden division, now operating independently as The Madison Square Garden Company (see above). The Rainbow Media subsidiary of Cablevision also operated a satellite television company called Voom, which was shut down on April 30, 2005, but lived on as a series of high-definition television channels named Voom HD Networks. They were available on Cablevision and iO digital cable until January 21, 2009. However, the 15 U.S. channels were eventually also shut down due to lack of distribution prior to the spinning off of Rainbow Media from Cablevision as the independent AMC Networks.^[28]

Cablevision also owned the former SportsChannel America from its beginning in 1976 until it was dissolved into Fox Sports Net in the late 1990s. In 2007 Cablevision sold its control of FSN Bay Area and FSN New England to Comcast for $570 million.^[29] These were the last of their regional sports networks outside the New York area.

From September 1988 through July 1989, Cablevision did not carry MSG Network (at the time owned by Gulf+Western, which later became Paramount Communications) over the question of whether MSG should be offered as a basic service or a premium service. This move also occurred as New York Yankees games on cable moved to MSG from Cablevision-owned SportsChannel.^[33][34] The Cablevision position was that those who wished to pay for sports programming should shoulder the burden, not every consumer. This dispute ended with Cablevision offering MSG as a premium subscription service.

Cablevision did not carry most of the games of the New York Yankees in 2002, because they would not accept the price asked during the inaugural season of YES Network. Again, at the root of the argument was who was to pay for sports programming. Cablevision wanted to offer YES as a premium service, like MSG and Fox Sports NY, where YES ownership wanted the channel on the 'Family Cable' tier. After a long standoff, a deal was made the following year. As a result, YES, along with MSG and Fox Sports NY, moved to the 'Family Cable' Tier.

Until 2012, Cablevision never carried the NFL Network, as the company stated that it would like to be able to carry NFL Sunday Ticket (which was, by contract, exclusive to DirecTV until the completion of the 2022 season^[35]) before it carries NFL Network. This has been criticized by New Jersey legislators.^[36] Recently however, Cablevision purchased Bresnan Communications, a company headquartered in Purchase, New York, but which did all of its business in the Rocky Mountain region. Because of this, the NFL Network is carried on the former Bresnan (now Optimum West) systems, but not on Optimum systems in Greater New York. Finally, on August 16, 2012, Cablevision announced that they have reached an agreement with the NFL to carry the network on all its systems effective August 17.^[37]

Cablevision también transmitió Tennis Channel durante un breve período, desde octubre de 2009 hasta septiembre de 2011. Cablevision se unió a NCTC en agosto de 2009 solo para incluir Tennis Channel en su paquete deportivo premium, que tiene un costo adicional mensual. Al unirse a NCTC, Tennis Channel se vio obligado a ceder su señal a Cablevision. Una vez que el contrato de Tennis Channel con NCTC expiró el 3 de septiembre de 2011, Tennis Channel retiró su señal de todos los operadores de cable que no estaban dispuestos a negociar un nuevo acuerdo ni a ampliar su cobertura. Tennis Channel fue retirado de Verizon, pero regresó el 17 de enero de 2012. Hasta junio de 2012, Cablevision aún no había intentado recuperar Tennis Channel.

Cablevision nunca ofreció ESPN360.com, ahora llamado ESPN3.com, un servicio de banda ancha de ESPN. Además, Cablevision aún no ofrecía WatchESPN a sus clientes, una aplicación que permite ver los canales de ESPN fuera de casa. ESPN requiere que los usuarios indiquen su proveedor de cable para poder ver la programación, y Cablevision aún no había aceptado ofrecer WatchESPN.

El 4 de octubre de 2012, ESPN y Cablevision anunciaron un acuerdo integral de distribución y transmisión que incluía el acceso de los clientes de Cablevision a ESPN3 y WatchESPN, además de otras aplicaciones Watch que cubrían la familia de canales de Walt Disney Company. ^{[ 38 ]} El 19 de noviembre, Cablevision anunció que ESPN3 estaba disponible para los clientes de Optimum Online. ^{[ 39 ]} Un mes después, el 19 de diciembre, WatchESPN se lanzó para los clientes de Optimum TV. ^{[ 40 ]}

Cablevision, como proveedor de contenido, también se vio envuelto en una disputa con Verizon por la transmisión de MSG Network y Fox Sports Net New York en sus sistemas de televisión FiOS . Verizon demandó a Cablevision, alegando que Cablevision, que aún era propietaria de MSG Network junto con todas las propiedades relacionadas con el Madison Square Garden en ese momento, no quería poner a disposición de un competidor emergente para sus sistemas de cable su valiosa cobertura deportiva local de los New York Rangers , New York Islanders y New Jersey Devils de la NHL y los New York Knicks y New Jersey Nets de la NBA. Se llegó a un acuerdo en noviembre de 2006 (poco después de que la NHL y la NBA comenzaran sus temporadas 2006-07) que permitió a FiOS transmitir estos canales. ^{[ 41 ]} Sin embargo, la programación de MSG se limitó a definición estándar en los sistemas FiOS hasta las temporadas 2011-12 de la NHL y la NBA, cuando una orden judicial obligó a Cablevision a proporcionar a Verizon las señales HD de su programación deportiva.

Additionally, Cablevision owned exclusive rights to the MSNBC news network in its service territory, preventing its carriage by FiOS in overlapping areas.^[42] However, this exclusivity ended in February 2010.^[43]

In February 2011, Cablevision moved the Game Show Network (GSN) from the basic tier to an add-on sports package. In October 2011, GSN filed a lawsuit claiming that the network was being discriminated against because Cablevision gave preference to other channels that they owned (AMC Networks) which did not move. In November 2016, a Federal Communications Commission administrative law judge that Cablevision had acted unlawfully and recommended that the FCC require Cablevision (now Altice) to carry the channel on their expanded basic tier and imposed a maximum fine of $400,000.

On August 17, 2012, without warning, Cablevision pulled stations from the Tribune Company.^[53] The removed stations included WPIX (New York), which is carried on most Cablevision systems, WPHL (Philadelphia) on Central Jersey systems in Mercer, Monmouth and Ocean Counties, WCCT (Hartford, CT) on some Connecticut systems, and KWGN (Denver) on Optimum West systems in Colorado and Wyoming. WTIC-TV and WGN America were initially not included in this dispute, but on August 24, Tribune pulled WTIC in Connecticut and WGN from Cablevision's Connecticut and Optimum West systems. Like the dispute with Time Warner Cable and Hearst Television, these channels were replaced with other cable offerings.

In a statement, Cablevision said that "The bankrupt Tribune Co. and the hedge funds and banks that own it, including Oaktree Capital Management, Angelo Gordon & Co. and others, are trying to solve Tribune's financial problems on the backs of Cablevision customers. Tribune and their hedge fund owners are demanding tens of millions in new fees for WPIX and other stations they own. They should stop their anti-consumer demands and work productively to reach an agreement."^[54]

Tribune, in its own statement, said that "Cablevision took this action despite our offer of an unconditional extension of the current carriage agreement with no change in terms while negotiations continued. To be clear, Tribune was willing to provide Cablevision subscribers access to the valuable programming on these stations while working toward a new agreement. Tribune never made any threat to withdraw these stations or any demand that Cablevision remove them. Tribune makes a substantial annual investment in local news, live sports and high-quality entertainment programming. Cablevision has never compensated Tribune for the retransmission of its local stations, which are among the most highly watched channels on Cablevision's lineups. What we have proposed amounts to less than a penny a day per subscriber, well below what Cablevision pays to providers of less well-watched channels".^[55]

The dispute between the two companies ended on October 26, 2012, when Cablevision reached an agreement with Tribune after Connecticut viewers complained about not seeing the first two games of the 2012 World Series. The channels were not restored until the morning of October 27.

On January 3, 2014, WFSB, the CBS station in Hartford, CT, pulled its signal from Cablevision's Connecticut systems. The dispute was due to the fact that Cablevision did not want to pay Meredith Corporation, the station's owner, for Fairfield County and Litchfield County customers, because they already had the flagship CBS station, WCBS-TV from New York. The dispute ended on January 19.