Time Warner Pulls the Plug, Then Restores, CBS in L.A., N.Y. and Dallas

The war between Time Warner Cable and CBS over retransmission fees flaired late Monday evening as the cable company began pulling the plug on CBS programming at 9 p.m. Then somebody blinked. Programming was restored and tense negotiations resumed.

About 3 million Time Warner customers in Greater Los Angeles, New York City, and Dallas stand to lose Showtime, TMC, Flix, and Smithsonian, if the blackout resumes, according to the Verge media website.

"We're at war with Time Warner Cable," CBS Chief Executive Les Moonves told the Los Angeles Times after seeing Time Warner Cable's statement during a party the network was throwing at the Beverly Hilton to promote its fall television season.

CBS stated earlier in the evening: "In spite of all our efforts to hammer out a fair agreement, Time Warner Cable has dropped CBS and Showtime from its channel lineup effective midnight EDT.

"Meanwhile, they continue to engage in a public campaign of disinformation and voodoo mathematics (featuring wildly inflated percentages) while doggedly restating their positions. Time Warner Cable seems incapable of accepting the concept that the value of a company's programming should be in line with its popularity."

The battle has been over how much Time Warner is willing to pay for the right to retransmit CBS programs including KCBS and KCAL in Los Angeles.

Time Warner has said it is fighting a 600 percent markup on fees compared with what it pays in the rest of the country.

"As of midnight ET, Time Warner Cable customers in New York City, Dallas and Los Angeles will no longer receive their local CBS broadcast stations," Time Warner Cable spokeswoman Maureen Huff said in a statement to the CNET website. CNET is a subsidiary of CBS Corp. 

"In addition, we have been forced to remove Showtime, TMC, Flix and Smithsonian from our lineups across the country. We offered to pay reasonable increases, but CBS' demands are out of line and unfair -- and they want Time Warner Cable to pay more than others pay for the same programming," she said.

To view CBS programs on online, go to CBS.com. Showtime subscribers can go to sho.com.