National Basketball Association

MSG channels cut for TW subscribers

Published Dec. 31, 2011 12:00 a.m. ET

foxsports

NEW YORK — Madison Square Garden Co.'s sports networks won't be available for Time Warner Cable Inc. subscribers in the new year, as the two sides were unable to resolve a dispute over programming costs.

The apparent failure to resolve the dispute is expected to result in the loss of New York Knicks and Rangers games for the cable distributor's subscribers.

Both sides leveled accusations at each other late Saturday over who caused the loss of programming for fans, continuing a war of words that had escalated of late. Over the past week, the two companies have run advertisements blaming each other for threatening to black out games for New York Sports fans.

"We are disappointed that MSG and MSG Plus will be dropped from Time Warner Cable's lineup," said Michael Bair, president of MSG Media, in a New Year's Eve press release.

"All we have asked is for Time Warner Cable to value our programming in the same way as other TV providers — nothing more, nothing less. Unfortunately, they rejected every offer we made to them for almost two years."

Meanwhile, Time Warner Cable said in an emailed statement, "The decision to remove their programming from our lineup rests entirely with MSG. By making that decision well in advance of the deadline, MSG has again shown that they are more interested in holding New York sports fans hostage than in negotiating a deal."

Madison Square Garden, which produces Knicks and Rangers games on its MSG network, had its previous deal with Time Warner Cable in place since 2005. The expiration comes as Time Warner Cable, the second-largest US cable provider behind Comcast Corp., is working to slow defections by its pay-TV service customers as it faces demands for more fees from content providers.

MSG's cable networks are controlled by the Dolan family, which also has majority stakes in AMC Networks Inc. and Cablevision Systems Corp., the cable company that spun out MSG early in 2010.