Cablevision and Verizon FiOS are battling with Tennis Channel over the amount of subscriber fees, and digital tiers and are no longer carrying it during the US Open. Cablevision and Verizon FiOS both serve a large portion of the Northeastern part of the United States, including New York City.
It is unclear whether it was Tennis Channel which pulled the plug on its service, or whether it was Cablevision and Verizon FiOS, but the companies acknowledged that it had occurred on September 4.
"We regret that Cablevision has elected to no longer carry Tennis Channel under the terms of the network’s new agreement with the National Cable Television Cooperative (NCTC)—an organization Cablevision joined a few days before the 2009 US Open seemingly only to get access to Tennis Channel, under terms that the network had agreed to with much smaller operators seven years earlier," Tennis Channel said in a statement. "By not agreeing to the NCTC guidelines, as many other NCTC members have done, Cablevision has chosen to drop Tennis Channel and no longer offer it to its subscribers."
Cablevision replied: "Tennis Channel has decided not to renew our agreement and has unfortunately pulled their programming from our customers. The Tennis Channel appears to have pulled its signal off dozens of cable systems across the country, including Cablevision, after demanding significantly higher fees."
According to Multichannel News, the NCTC negotiates programming contracts for nearly 1,000 member companies, and Tennis Channel signed a deal last month that called for digital basic programming, rather than being put on sports tiers.
Cablevision and Tennis Channel had a dispute in 2009 when Tennis Channel decided not to authorize its signal to Cablevision subscribers during the US Open.
Tennis Channel has been available as part of sports pack comprising 23 networks, which costs $6.95 per month. Sources told Multichannel News that about 150,000 of Cablevision's three million digital-cable customers subscribe to it.
Tennis Channel is also awaiting resolution in its complaint against Comcast at the Federal Communications Commision, where it is claiming that its been discriminated on the basis of affiliation and wants to be put on the same tier as the Golf Channel and Versus. Tennis Channel has said that 2.7 million of Comcast's 23 million subscribers get its service.