As this is old news, I figured I would write about it here since I have not seen an article appear on CBM yet. This is a tragedy to say the least.
Back in August, Cablevision made the decision to drop WPIX/the CW Network as The Tribune Broadcasting Company (the company that owns CW) were asking for more money in re-transmission fees. According to recent articles, Cablevision is pointing their finger at Tribune Broadcasting, stating that the reasoning for the raise in retrans fees were due to their company's financial woes after the 2008 crash.
However, on the flip side of this argument, the Tribune Broadcasting Company stated that the raise in fees that they were asking would only amount to one cent for every Cablevision subscriber. Tribune went on to say that Cablevision simply cut the feed to the network abuptly even before their contract was up for renewal with the new price hike while negotiations were still going on.
So, what does this mean for us lowly comic book fans? Well, simply put, if you are a Cablevision subscriber and a comic book lover, you will not be able to watch tv show fan-favorites "Supernatural" or the upcoming series "Arrow" as they air. You will have to find some other means of watching these shows, such as Hulu, streaming, or buying each episode on iTunes.
Fans who have been fans of the show "Supernatural" will not be able to watch the season 8 premiere tonight and will have to wait until early tomorrow morning to view the episode. If any of you are like me, who has watched every episode since it first premiered back in 2005, know just how painful this is. To be with this show for 7 years and to suddenly be denied one of my favorite shows is one of the most irritating things I've ever experienced.
Most frustrating of all is that those of us who have Cablevision will not be able to watch the series premiere of "Arrow" next week. This is a series that I have been looking forward to for over a year. Since the departure of "Smallville", I have been waiting for the next DC Comics live action show to take its place, and now I'm being denied the pleasure of watching it as it airs. What will this mean for ratings? How will this effect the network's decision to renew it for a second season?
At the end of the day, I know that these things are all about money. Business is business and there's no way around that, obviously. But I do think that it is extremely selfish of Cablevision to simply make this decision without first consulting their subscribers or, at the very least, giving them the choice to pay extra to have that network on their service! I am, hopefully like many of you, upset with this. At this point now, the only choices that we have are to either suck it up and not watch a show that we love, or we are forced to switch services to Direct TV.
I would like to try to urge everyone here to join me in trying to get Cablevision to bring back the CW! For them to make this decision without even consulting their service subscribers is extremely rude, in my opinion. If any of you guys are with me, go to:
http://www.change.org/petitions/cablevision-bring-back-pix11
Sign the petition today. Make a difference and help out in any way you can!!