Cliffhanger: Will New Yorkers See the Oscars?

WASHINGTON (March 4) -- The prospect is worse than an ostrich-feather fashion faux pas: More than 3 million New York City-area Oscar fans sitting in front of a blank television screen Sunday night.

The possible interruption of the Academy Awards -- and other ABC programming -- is thanks to a dispute between ABC parent Walt Disney Co. and Cablevision. Cable systems must renegotiate with broadcasters every three years over how much they pay to carry the broadcast programming, but the two sides haven't been able to agree.

It's enough to spur Congress into action, or at least into writing letters about it. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., this week urged the Federal Communications Commission to press Disney and Cablevision to keep the ABC signal alive until they finish negotiations.

"I recognize that these are private negotiations, but its resolution is something that matters to the consumers who take hard-earned money out of their wallets each month to pay their cable bills and have a right to expect not to be collateral damage in wars between executives," said Kerry, who serves as chairman of the Senate Commerce subcommittee overseeing communications.

It's not the first time broadcasters have negotiated to the "11th hour and 59th minute," said Dennis Wharton, spokesman for the National Association of Broadcasters. And usually the disputes -- like a similar one between Fox and Time Warner Cable just before the New Year's Day football bowl games -- get settled without viewers losing their signal.

Why? Ad rates are based on viewership, Wharton said. In the case of the Academy Awards, that is big money, with a 30-second ad selling for more than $1.3 million. If Cablevision customers don't get to watch the Oscars, that's 3.1 million fewer viewers.

"The system is working just as Congress intended," Wharton said, with tens of thousands of agreements between broadcasters and cable systems signed without the high drama.

But Kerry does not have as much confidence in the regime arranged in 1992. Broadcasters like ABC, he said, should not be allowed to negotiate for more payments by threatening to pull their programming, unless the cable company is not negotiating in good faith.

American Cable Association president Matthew M. Polka agreed.

"It's deplorable, but hardly surprising to small cable operators, that the Walt Disney Co. would engage in such an extreme tactic as pulling its ABC signal from 3.1 million Cablevision Systems Corp. customers on the eve of a major television event like the Oscars, simply to extract more cash from cable customers boxed in by a broken retransmission consent regime," Polka said in a statement.

Cablevision's statement on the topic echoed Kerry's call that ABC not be able to pull the plug on the Oscars.

Rebecca Campbell, president of WABC-TV, blamed Cablevision. Her station urged viewers to tell the company "lose my shows, lose my business." Cablevision charges customers $18 a month for access to broadcast stations but won't pay a fair price to ABC for access to its popular programming, according to ABC.

Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, the top Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, also weighed in with a letter to the FCC. But he urged the government to keep its nose out of the dispute. Both sides have plenty of power in the negotiations and viewers have plenty of other options on the Internet and satellite television.

Robert Kesten, head of the Center for Screen-Time Awareness, has a more radical idea: applaud a standoff that keeps the Oscars off 3 million television sets. "ABC might be offering its constituents an opportunity to spend time with each other -- with real people instead of imaginary people on a red carpet."

His group's motto is "do things, rather than view things."

After all, he said, even the "Desperate Housewives" aren't so desperate they sit around watching television.