GSN Alleges Cablevision Discriminated Against It in Carriage
Cablevision discriminated against the Game Show Network by moving it off a basic tier of the cable operator in February, GSN said in a program carriage complaint filed with the FCC Wednesday night. It alleged the cable operator gave wider carriage to its own networks, which weren’t moved to the sports programming package like GSN was. The complaint portrayed those networks that were owned at the time by Cablevision -- We TV and Wedding Central -- as similar to GSN. Cablevision rejected that comparison.
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The cable operator’s stated reasons for moving GSN don’t fly, the independent programmer said. It said Cablevision offered as the rationale for the channel change that the move would cut the operator’s expenses and that the ratings for the network weren’t high enough to be so widely distributed. “Both proffered justifications are pretextual, and neither clouds the reality that the action was discriminatory and self-protective,” the channel said.
GSN seeks standstill carriage on Cablevision, so the cable operator will be required to restore the channel to its expanded-basic tier, an executive of the programmer told us. The channel filed a petition for temporary relief to that effect, under new FCC rules. They allow the Media Bureau to order interim carriage while program carriage cases are pending and after the bureau has found a prima facie case has been made. GSN is owned by DirecTV and Sony and distributed in about 75 million pay-TV households, a spokeswoman said.
The “broad distribution” of Wedding Central on Cablevision’s systems came as that channel was “fledgling,” GSN said. “Wedding Channel floundered, failing to gain carriage from other major distributors.” A footnote said Cablevision this year shut the network down because other multichannel video programming distributors “refused to carry it.” Cablevision suggested to a DirecTV executive who was on GSN’s management committee that the cable operator would agree to restore the wider carriage of the network if the DBS company carried Wedding Central, GSN said: Cablevision then “followed through on its threat.”
GSN said it’s more popular nationally than We TV, and both channels have similar ratings in the New York market where Cablevision owns systems, even though the cable operator doesn’t carry them on the same tier. The sports tier is “little seen” and “ill-suited” to its “predominately female audience,” the channel said. It said the sports package is “targeted exclusively to men.” We TV is owned by AMC Networks, which separated earlier this year from Cablevision.
GSN’s programming comparisons “make a mockery of the FCC’s program carriage rules,” a Cablevision spokesman said. We TV’s shows are meant for “all women” while GSN shows “old game shows,” he said. “We believe the FCC will see through this self-serving ploy and reject GSN’s claim.” The GSN spokesman said the network shows many new programs and the old-game-show portrayal “couldn’t be farther from the truth.” The channel has “a huge amount of original programming,” she added.
GSN tried to make “multiple efforts to address this with Cablevision directly,” another executive of the channel said. “The only offers that they made were clearly not made in good faith, because they were economically unreasonable, and frankly were not terms that they even would accept for their own services,” the executive said. “So we had no other choice but to go to the FCC.” While the programmer hopes the commission will “address our complaint as promptly as possible,” timing of a decision isn’t a primary concern for GSN because of the standstill it has sought, the executive added: “We think that the issues we raised are important and that this is a very clear violation of Section 616” of the Telecom Act.