"Outbreak"-- The people of Chesterâ��s Mill fall into a state of panic as an outbreak of meningitis strikes their community, threatening their already depleted medical supplies. Meanwhile, Julia continues to search for answers into her husbandâ��s disappearance, on UNDER THE DOME, Monday, July 15 (10:00-11:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network. Pictured: L-R Dean Norris as Big Jim and Alexander Koch as Junior Photo: Michael Tackett/�©2013 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. [Via MerlinFTP Drop] (Photo: Michael Tackett, CBS)
CBS said Friday afternoon that it has failed to reach an agreement with Time Warner Cable by their Friday, 5 p.m. deadline and the cable company has dropped the No. 1 primetime network in key markets.
"Effective 5:00 PM Eastern Time, Time Warner Cable has dropped CBS in New York City, Los Angeles, Dallas and several other markets. We deeply regret this ill-advised action, which is injurious not only to our many affected viewers, but also to Time Warner Cable itself," said CBS, in a statement.
"We agreed to an extension on Tuesday morning with the expectation that we would engage in a meaningful negotiation with CBS," Time Warner Cable said in its statement. "Since then, CBS has refused to have a productive discussion. It's become clear that no matter how much time we give them, they're not willing to come to reasonable terms."
The companies are seeking to extend their contract for retransmission fees, the money that cable and satellite TV providers pay TV station owners for the right to carry their signals. The contract expired at the end of June but the network was kept on the cable company's lineup as the talks continued. They've set numerous deadlines in the last month that were continuously delayed.
Without a contract in place, the companies have said, the network would be dropped for TWC customers in eight markets nationwide. It'll particularly affect three major cities where TWC is the dominant pay-TV provider and CBS owns its local network station - New York, Los Angeles and Dallas.
The contract only involves TV stations owned by New York-based CBS Corp. CBS-affiliate stations owned by other broadcasting companies - even if they're in TWC service areas - are not affected by the negotiations.
RBC Capital Markets, an investment bank, estimates CBS gets paid about 88 cents per cable subscriber per month for retransmission rights.
TWC has said CBS wants to raise the fee as much as 600%, though it says that figure is based on an average fee it pays for all CBS stations in service areas.
"Time Warner Cable has conducted negotiations in a combative and non-productive spirit, indulging in pointless brinkmanship and distorted public positioning - such as the fictional and ridiculous 600% increase CBS supposedly demanded - while maintaining antiquated positions no longer held by any other programming distributor in the business," CBS said.
The following eight CBS-owned stations are part of the negotiations. They include stations airing CBS or CW network programming and independent (Ind) stations:
* New York: WCBS and WLNY (Ind)* Los Angeles: KCBS and KCAL (Ind)* Dallas: KTVT-CBS and KTXA (Ind)* Boston: WBZ-CBS and WSBK (Ind)* Pittsburgh: KDKA-CBS and WPCW-CW* Chicago: WBBM-CBS* Detroit: WKBD-CW* Denver: KCNC-CBS
