CBS Plays Hardball as Affiliate Fees Pile Up

In its pursuit of a bigger share of pay-television fees, CBS plays hardball.

At the heart of the dispute is the relationship between networks and affiliates. While major networks own stations in big markets, they rely on stations owned by other companies to show their programming in most of the US. And the fees that pay-TV operators, such as Comcast and Time Warner Cable, pay for the programming go to the broadcast stations in each market, not the network itself. As a result, a network will receive pay-TV "retransmission" fees directly only from those stations it owns outright. But the networks have successfully demanded that affiliate stations share the fees they negotiate with pay-TV operators. In the past few years, networks have been pushing for a bigger cut of that revenue.