A Phony War in Cable-TV Land

[Commentary] CBS and Time Warner Cable are locked in one of those "retransmission" showdowns that Congress ordained in the 1992 Cable Act, when it gave local broadcast stations the option of demanding that cable operators pay them for the same signal the broadcast operators put out free over the public airwaves. But here we struggle to find the right metaphor. These battles are like Burger King and McDonald's fiercely battling over a prime corner in Atlantis 15 minutes before the city sinks beneath the waves.

One doesn't normally look to cable executives to give voice to ontological ironies. But Time Warner's Glenn Britt did so when he suggested that if CBS wasn't happy with what Time Warner was willing to pay to carry its channels, CBS could offer those channels directly to consumers on an a la carte basis. He must be joking. Surely he can't be serious. C'est absurd. Such was TV land's universal response. As it happens, Mr. Britt probably wasn't serious. But in another sense, nothing is stopping CBS right now from cutting out the middleman and selling its programming directly to anybody with a web connection. CBS doesn't need a retrans agreement. It just needs to put up an app in the app store.