News on FOX blackout!

Much to the alarm of millions of baseball playoff, football and sitcom fans, Fox channels went dark today as the broadcaster and a major cable provider wrangled over multimillion-dollar fees during a contentious meeting in Manhattan.

Across the river in New Jersey, there was not much "Glee" either for Cablevision customers who had been without FOX since early this morning.

"If I miss ‘Glee,’ I’m not going to be happy at all," said Thea Okin of South Orange, as she and a friend emerged from the local Starbucks.

"I don’t care about the Yankees. There’s no football, no baseball, but that’s not as important as ‘Glee,’" she said of the popular FOX musical comedy.

But the blackout came amid a major weekend for professional sports as the Phillies face the San Francisco Giants in the National League Championship Series tonight at 7:30. Sunday, FOX is scheduled to carry the New York Giants playing the Detroit Lions.

Fox spokesman Scott Grogin said at 2 p.m. that no deal had been struck.

The potential interruption in viewing weekend sports rankled Cablevision customers.

"I can’t watch football? That’s a problem," said Ben Emmel, a Seton Hall student. "That’s probably the number one reason I watch FOX. There are going to be a lot of angry Giants and Jets fans in this area."

Emmel, 21, said the dispute was a lose-lose situation for both FOX and Cablevision.

"I think a lot of people won’t watch Cablevision if they don’t have Fox, and Fox is going to lose out on a lot of advertising," he said. "It seems strange to me the two corporations can’t come to an agreement."

A continuous-loop message Cablevision ran throughout the day on FOX 5 and My 9 accused News Corp., FOX’s parent company, of extorting money from Cablevision customers by demanding $150 million to retransmit FOX programming — roughly twice as much as the cable provider says it now pays.

"News Corp. is demanding more for FOX 5 than we pay for every other broadcast channel. In fact, they want more for FOX 5 than we pay CBS, NBC, ABC and Univision combined," the message said. "Why is News Corp. making these outrageous demands? Greed."

Former South Orange trustee Stacey Jennings agreed with the characterization of News Corp. and FOX being primarily concerned with profit.

"It’s greed, it’s power. They’re acting like a monopoly," she said of FOX, adding the Federal Communications Commission should intervene. "They let them get away with it."

Staff writer Julie O’Connor contributed to this report.

source: nj.com