At the Last Minute, a Disney-Cablevision Truce

The Oscar statuette became a pawn in a public brawl between the Walt Disney Company and Cablevision on Sunday, a dispute that prevented more than three million viewers from watching the beginning of the Academy Awards show until a tentative agreement restored the signal 14 minutes into the telecast. The accord ended a high-stakes game of brinkmanship between the two companies that was the latest in a string of recent feuds between media giants over transmission fees. Although terms of the deal were not disclosed, a person familiar with the situation indicated that Disney ended up getting 55 to 65 cents per subscriber per month. (Other reports say closer to 27 cents to 37 cents.) Apparently, Disney first asked for $1 and Cablevision countered with 25 cents. Cablevision has 3.1 million subscribers in the tri-state region.

Early Sunday morning, Disney pulled the signal on WABC, its flagship station in the New York area, as it pressed its case for payments from Cablevision. The pre-Oscar interviews, the red carpet show and the opening monologue by Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin were all blacked out. But the two companies said they had finally found some common ground at 8:44 p.m. Eastern time, the same time that the signal for WABC was restored. Suddenly, Cablevision customers who had spent the day scrambling to watch the show saw the actress Penelope Cruz walking up on stage to present the first award. Still, the deal came too late for many Cablevision subscribers, who had already made alternative plans. Some held impromptu viewing parties with satellite-equipped friends, some searched for bars showing the Oscars, and some tried in vain to watch via the Internet.