ESPN and Charter Communications agreed to take a time out last week as negotiations continue over the fate of ESPNews on Charter's systems. "At this juncture ESPN feels that this situation has been played on a far too public arena, and we hope to bring to a successful resolution by being a little bit more private from this point forward," said ESPN spokesman M.C. Antil. A Charter spokesman made a similar statement.

Meanwhile, ESPNews is playing on borrowed time in more than a million Charter households and has already lost its precious analog berth in 258,000 households to networks including Tech TV (owned by Charter's principal shareholder Paul Allen), FX, Hallmark and Oxygen. That leaves ESPNews available to 468,000 digital households and 642,000 analog households on Charter systems. ESPNews is in about 22 million homes nationwide.

There is no indication from either side that the negotiations, which hinge on limitations to ESPN's right to stream video, are getting anywhere. This is the beachhead between the network and the programmer; any agreement reached now will likely affect renewals for ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPN Classic.

Back to this issue