That was a close one. Well, actually it was still late.
After apparently two-years of negations broke down and ABC pulled its signals from Cablevision the night before, executives from The Walt Disney Company, owner of ABC, managed to get the Oscars back on at Cablevision a mere 13 minutes after the ceremony began. Still soon enough for 3.1 million viewers to watch Sandra Bullock and the Hurt Locker receive their awards, but too late for consumers to have faith in these two corporate giants. And that’s just if they had the patience to wait.
Oscar parties were cancelled. People travelled to friends’ homes to see the broadcast. And viewership in general was probably down.
It was bad enough that the station broadcast was pulled in the first place. But the real clincher in all of this is the awful PR battle being waged. The following statements, from the Washington Post were repeated over and over in countless media stories.
“Now the only way for their subscribers to get ABC-7 is to ditch Cablevision and switch to a provider that cares about them,” Rebecca Campbell, president and general manager of WABC-TV, said in a statement.
Ouch, that hurts. Especially for those people who have no choice in their programming provider.
“It is now painfully clear to millions of New York area households that Disney CEO Bob Iger will hold his own ABC viewers hostage in order to extract $40 million in new fees from Cablevision,” said Charles Schueler, Cablevision’s executive vice president of communications.
Wow, that is just as bad.
My opinion is that the PR battle should have been waged without the public being hurt. Statements about their support for the community should have taken priority over “how awful the other guy is.” In this era of “turn off the TV and watch it on the computer” both Walt Disney/ABC and Cablevision would be better off trying to support their customers in lieu of letting them get hurt in a battle over who makes more money.
In the end we all got to see Sandra Bullock bring home a well-deserved award. So the night wasn’t a terrible disaster.
Here is a news clip on the issue:
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