News Corp. Shuts Off Hulu Access To Cablevision

ideonexus writes "Normally when we advocate Net Neutrality, we are talking about preventing ISPs from discriminating against content providers, but in this case, the content provider is discriminating against the ISP. Is this a new dimension in the Net Neutrality fight? From the article: 'Cablevision internet customers lost access to Fox.com and Fox programming on Hulu for a time Saturday afternoon — the result of a misguided effort on News Corp.'s part to cut off online viewing as an alternative in its standoff with the cable operator over retrans fees. Fox stations in NYC, Philadelphia, and New Jersey went dark at midnight Friday when negotiations between the two broke down.'"

Comments

News Corp/Fox is out of control

[Brad1138]

I work in the satellite dish industry. We are dealing with and fairly informed on the News Corp/Dish Network dispute. On the CableVision side, News Corp is trying to raise their rates from $70 mil to $150 mil, over a 100% increase. With Dish Network, they are trying to force Dish to include the Fox Sports regional networks into the lowest package, which would raise that package $5/month ($40 to $45). News Corp is trying to tell Dish how to run their business. There are plenty of people that don't care about sports and don't want to pay the extra money for it. The reason News Corp wants their Sports channels in the lowest package is to increase (the perceived) viewership numbers so they can raise their advertising rates.

A lot of the Dish Net/Cablevision customer won't see beyond "my channels are gone" and switch to a different provider. That is exactly the wrong thing to do. Dish Net/Cablevision are fighting to keep our rates down, but they can't do it if everybody jumps ship. Dish won the recent battle against Fisher Communications, they were trying to raise their rates 78% for over the air, tax payer subsidized "free" channels. Fisher Communications was already the highest paid among their piers, and wanted to nearly double their rates.