Time Warner Cable Fees Negotiations With CBS Failed To Reach An Agreement

(RTTNews) - CBS Corporation(CBS-A, CBS), Friday in a statement said that the owing to the Time Warner Cable blackout, Time Warner Cable(TWC) subscribers will not get to watch the CBS Sports' live golf coverage beginning on August 3, and CBS Sports' coverage of the season's final major, the PGA Championship, beginning August 8 and continuing through final-round coverage on August 11. The negotiations between the companies failed to reach an agreement over fees.

Time Warner Cable said that it had agreed to extend talks until Tuesday morning but that CBS "refused to have a productive discussion." The cable operator added that it continues to fight hard to keep their prices down.

In a statement, CBS accused Time Warner Cable of negotiating "in a combative and nonproductive spirit…while maintaining antiquated positions no longer held by any other programming distributor in the business."

CBS Corp said that Time Warner dropped CBS in New York City, Los Angeles, Dallas and several other markets. The company said that its an 'ill-advised action', and feels that Time Warner conducted the negotiations in a pointless way.

Time Warner Cable had previously said that CBS is asking for a 600 percent more payment to buy CBS programming directly from them in New York, Los Angeles and Dallas than TWC pay to buy their programming from other companies in dozens of other cities across the country. CBS claimed in the statement that the demands supposedly asked by it are fictional and ridiculous allegations from TWC.

CBS added that it is ready to enter into an agreement and seek reasonable term extensions to get that job done, as it claims that this is the maiden time CBS has been opted out from a cable system. CBS also made a mention that Time Warner has taken off air more than 50 other channels in the last five year, and also recently chose to exit CBS-owned Showtime, which it feels is an unnecessary move.

CBS said it seeks from the beginning only a fair compensation, and quoted: "...We hope and believe this period of darkness will be short and that we can all get back to the business of providing the best entertainment, news and sports to the Time Warner Cable customers we both serve."