For many New Yorkers who susbscribe to Cablevision for their TV service, the threatened inability to watch the Academy Awards tonight has been the source of much anxiety this week. Just a few hours before the Awards show is set to air, Cablevision answered calls that it submit to binding arbitration to resolve its dispute with Walt Disney Co. over monthly fees, and called on Disney to put its ABC network back on Cablevision, so viewers could enjoy the program in its entirety. See a full report here.
Is arbitration really a good forum for parties to decide what the price for television programming should be in New York City?
The hissy fit Disney threw is certainly ugly, but binding dispute resolution in the shadow of the law is one thing, and binding dispute resolution to establish a fundamental term of a contract about which the parties have not agreed and in which there is a thin market, is another. The latter is fundamentally standardless.
Cable companies are just getting too crazy these days. They are paid to provide a service, and when they fail to do that for their customers, why do we keep paying them?