Newsday Rejects Ads by Verizon, Now a Rival

At a time when most newspapers are hungry for any ads they can sell, Newsday has turned away a steady, lucrative customer that is also a direct competitor of the paper's parent company, Cablevision. Verizon Communications bought full-page ads in Newsday several times a month for its FiOS Internet and television service until a few months ago, when the paper said it would no longer take them, according to a Verizon executive and ad buyers who work with the company. "They made it clear we didn't need to keep calling," said Eric Rabe, a senior vice president of Verizon. He and others involved said that Newsday had offered no explanation and had not objected to the content of the ads. But FiOS is a leading competitor on Long Island to Cablevision, the dominant provider of pay television and high-speed Internet in that market. Since last year, Cablevision has also owned Newsday, the region's dominant newspaper. It also owns News 12, a Long Island local news station, giving it a hold on information delivery that is unmatched by a single company in any other large market in the country.