Court TV sparring with EchoStar

Cable net fights back after being dropped

By JOHN DEMPSEY

The battle between Turner Broadcasting and EchoStar has begun after the satcaster removed Turner's Court TV from its lineup Monday, affecting more than 11 million Dish subscribers.

Court TV's Web site now includes a prominent notice admonishing EchoStar subscribers, "Don't stand for this injustice." Right below that declaration, a toll-free number funnels the caller to the switchboards of either DirecTV on line one or one's local cable system on line two.

"We haven't yet put money into a public marketing campaign" against EchoStar, said Andy Heller, president of distribution for Turner Broadcasting System, a division of Time Warner.

But Heller also said there are no talks going on between Turner and EchoStar, which makes him fear there won't be a quick resolution to the dispute.

EchoStar head of programming Eric Sahl said in a statement that Court TV is making "unreasonable demands," asking the satellite distrib's customers "to pay a DBS premium for a channel owned by the second-largest cable operator, Time Warner."

Heller said Court TV made a fair offer consistent with what DirecTV and dozens of cable operators pay for the network. He declined to go into detail, but Kagan Research said Court TV's monthly license fee averages a relatively modest 11¢ per subscriber.

In its new deals, Court TV is asking for an increase.

Like most high-visibility cable nets, Court TV pockets about two-thirds of its annual revenues -- $174.9 million last year -- from advertisers and one-third ($110.4 million) from cable operators and satcasters.

But Court TV commissions at least 20 regularly scheduled original primetime programs a year, including such hits as "Forensic Files" and "Most Shocking." For this year the web has in development another dozen or more series, making it one of the most aggressive producers of original series among cable networks.

For that reason, Court TV is convinced cable ops and satcasters should be paying more for the net, whose programming budget ran to about $110 million last year, according to Kagan.

But losing 11 million households from its 88 million subscriber base could cut into Court TV's ratings, which would affect its ad rates.

In the original negotiations, EchoStar wanted to drop Court TV from its most highly penetrated tier to a lesser one that would cost the network about 3 million Dish households, Heller said. The only way Court TV would have accepted such a demotion, he continued, is based on a standard rate card common to all cable nets: The monthly fee for each customer must go up to help offset the loss of potential EchoStar viewers.

EchoStar has had some highly publicized battles in the past with cablers ranging from Lifetime to Comcast's Versus. The parties ended up making a deal, but not until they engaged in lots of weeping and gnashing of teeth.