In CBS versus Time Warner Cable, Who Has the Interests of Viewers in Mind? (Spoiler: Not CBS)

[Commentary] When it comes to disputes between companies, particularly when they're just about money, I usually don't care about the he-said/she-said. What matters is the effect on consumers, and when financial disputes between companies threaten to harm consumers, I just want them to work it out. But the Time Warner Cable/CBS dispute has gotten ugly, and from what I can see, CBS is being unreasonable, not TWC.

The details of the dispute are nothing new—the law gives broadcasters the right to make cable systems pay them for carriage—something that other antennas technologies that pick up broadcast signals off the air don't have to do. The two companies can't agree on a price, and as a result, CBS might drop off of TWC viewer's TVs. (Unless they have an antenna, or a service like Aereo, of course.) Consumers will undoubtedly get mad at both TWC and CBS if they lose access to programming they like, but when it comes down to it, CBS is inflexibly demanding more money from viewer's wallets and TWC is looking for ways to keep costs low. (This is not to say that TWC is guaranteed to pass any savings or cost control measures on to viewers, of course. Baby steps.) CBS won't even negotiate on channel placement, telling Bloomberg that "CBS obviously won’t make any deals that require us to change our channel position." Why is that "obvious" exactly? In a commercial negotiation, everything should be on the table. Except that it's not. Broadcasters have systematic advantages over cable systems in these negotiations, which is why—despite all the criticism PK has leveled over the years at the cable industry on data caps, net neutrality, content restrictions, broadband buildout, and much else—when it comes to retransmission disputes, they have a point.