Time Warner Fox Stations May Go Dark Tomorrow

Either News Corp. is getting a little careless with its memos, or it’s trying to ratchet up pressure for an 11th-hour deal. An internal letter from its COO to employees warns that no deal is in the offing with Time Warner ahead of tomorrow's midnight deadline regarding the Fox network. That means Fox channels in cities where Time Warner is the cable distributor could go dark, reports the Los Angeles Times.

“Further extensions simply extend the period of time that Time Warner profits from our marquee programming without fairly compensating Fox for it," writes Chase Carey. Fox wants $1 per subscriber; Time Warner thinks more like 30 cents. Carey even manages to get in some digs on rivals. The requested “compensation is about equal to what Time Warner Cable pays TNT, a network with a fraction of the ratings and original programming of Fox, or about a quarter of what they pay ESPN, a network we again dwarf.” (More Fox network stories.)