The two sides have been unable to agree on fees that News Corp. is seeking for its national broadcast network, The Wall Street Journal reported. Fox wants $1 per subscriber per month; Time Warner Cable says it''s willing to pay Fox but it wants a lower price, the Journal reported.
Losing Fox would deprive Time Warner Cable /quotes/comstock/13*!twc/quotes/nls/twc (TWC 41.39, -0.44, -1.05%) subscribers of popular programming, including college-football bowl games, the Journal reported.
The dispute reflects an effort by TV stations to negotiate higher fees from the cable-TV networks that carry them as advertising revenue has slumped and digital media have become more prominent, the Journal reported.
A spokeswoman for Time Warner Cable told the Journal that the company has also reached a brief extension in its negotiations over carriage fees with Scripps Networks Interactive.
The Wall Street Journal and MarketWatch, like Fox, are members of the New York media group News Corp.
Meantime, Scripps Networks Interactive''s Food Network and HGTV were pulled from Cablevision in New York City, Long Island and the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut tri-state region at midnight Dec. 31 because the two sides couldn''t negotiate a new deal for program-distribution rights.
Cablevision''s contract enabling it to carry Food Network and HGTV -- Home and Garden Television -- expired Dec. 31.
The two programs "rank among the top networks in cable," said Kenneth W. Lowe, chairman, president and chief executive of Scripps Networks Interactive, which owns the two, in a statement on Friday. "But we are simply not being compensated like top-10 networks by Cablevision."
Scripps Networks Interactive,Knoxville, Tenn., said that Cablevision receives an average $83 a month from subscribers but pays less than 25 cents a subscriber combined for Food Network and HGTV. A study found that cable-TV customers value Food Network at $1.03 and HGTV at 73 cents a month, Scripps said.
Scripps said it is still willing to negotiate a new deal and is seeking "a very modest increase" in its rates for the programs.
For its part, Cablevision, /quotes/comstock/13*!cvc/quotes/nls/cvc (CVC 25.82, -0.24, -0.92%) Bethpage, N.Y., said in a statement, "We are sorry that Scripps''s current financial difficulties are making it impossible for them to continue our relationship on terms that are reasonable for Cablevision and our customers.
"We wish Scripps well and have no expectation of carrying their programming again, given the dramatic changes in their approach to working with distributors to reach television viewers."