Cable channels face cut

Do you want to pay more for cable or do you want to face losing some channels?

Time Warner Cable Inc. is asking customers to guide the cable provider on whether to "roll over" and pay more to the channels' owners or to "get tough" in negotiating fees, which may lead to losing programming for some time.

"We want to take the temperature of our customers on how our customers feel we should be responding," spokesman Jeffrey A. Unaitis said.

Customers can give their thoughts on a Web site the company launched.

Time Warner Cable said some outlets have asked for as much as four times what the cable provider pays now in programming fees, which can run a few cents per viewer to $4 per subscriber for ESPN.

If an agreement isn't reached, the cable operator may have to drop a channel from its lineup.

The cable operator said it paid $3 billion nationwide in programming fees in the first nine months of the year.

This is a national campaign, Mr. Unaitis said, that comes before several contracts expire, including those with The Weather Channel, certain News Corp. Fox stations and FX cable channel, and some cable channels of Scripps Networks Interactive Inc. including Food Network and HGTV.

Locally, the contract with WSTM-TV, the Syracuse NBC affiliate, WNYF-LP, the analog signal in Massena for the Watertown Fox affiliate, WFFF-TV, the Burlington, Vt. Fox affiliate, and WVNY-TV, the Burlington ABC affiliate, also will run out soon.

In January, a last-minute agreement kept 17 Viacom channels from blacking out on the Time Warner system.

"Very rarely do channels go away," Mr. Unaitis said. "When a channel does come off, it's not a decision we're making on our own."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

ON THE NET:

Time Warner Cable's feedback site: www.rolloverorgettough

.com