Time Warner Cable feuds with Cablevision executives over MSG fees

A dispute involving license fees for MSG Network has sparked a public skirmish between Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC) and executives at fellow cable MSO Cablevision (NYSE: CVC). 

MSG--which is run by Cablevision CEO Jiim Dolan and carries games from MSG's New York Knicks NBA team and New York Rangers hockey team--began warning Time Warner Cable subscribers on Saturday that they could lose the network since its contract expires at the end of the year. Time Warner Cable responded by issuing a news release that stated it would be up to MSG to kill its feed.

"We will not remove MSG/MSG+ from our New York Cable Systems," Time Warner Cable senior VP of content acquisitions Mike Angus said in a prepared statement. "The ball is in MSG's court, so these channels will come off only if MSG pulls the plug."

Time Warner Cable also released a letter from Angus to MSG Media president Michael Baer in which he says that he would agree to a 6.5 percent annual increase in fees for MSG, but that Time Warner Cable was opposed to demands that it also "pay millions of dollars" to carry Fuse, a music video network which is also owned by MSG Media.

Cablevision spun off MSG into a separate company in 2010. Both Cablevision and MSG are controlled by the Dolan family. Cablevision CEO Jim Dolan is also the executive chairman of MSG. 

MSG recently had a legal battle with Cablevision rivals Verizon (NYSE: VZ) and AT&T (NYSE: T), which fought successfully to force MSG to supply it with the high-definition version of the regional sports channel. Public skirmishes between vertically integrated cable MSOs such as Time Warner Cable and Cablevision do not occur very often, but will likely increase as cable programmers rely more on increased distribution fees to grow revenue.

For more:
- see this statement from Time Warner Cable

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