My Mother Wants Her Food Network!

My Mother Wants Her Food Network!
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My mother's lost the Food Network.

She is 84, her feet hurt, she no longer drives (thank goodness), and the weather is too bad to go outside, and now she find herself the victim of the war between Cablevision, which provides her cable service, and Scripps, which distributes the Food Network.

Cablevision and Scripps were unable to come to an agreement about how much Cablevision should pay Scripps to carry the Food Network (as well as Scripps' other channels, including Home & Garden). So that's it for the older women in Northern New Jersey and Long Island--there goes their Food Network. "We wish Scripps well and have no expectation of carrying their programming again," said a Cablevision spokesperson, who is either heartless or playing hardball.

Cable brinksmanship is suddenly a new paradigm. Fox and Time Warner Cable went down to the wire the other day, with Time Warner taking full-page ads accusing Fox (or its parent, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.) of extorting Time Warner. It all feels like the labor-management disputes of the '70s and '80s. The content providers are going on strike.

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