For all of you Time Warner Subscribers: http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/page1/556497 Houston Chronicle -- May 18, 2000, 8:49PM -- Time Warner, Disney reach tentative deal -- By MIKE McDANIEL Time Warner Inc. and the Walt Disney Co. have reached a tentative agreement for the cable company to continue carrying ABC programming. The deal could end the corporate feud that pulled the plug from 3.5 million homes, including 660,000 in Houston, earlier this month. Spokesmen for both Disney and Time Warner said Thursday that a deal is on the table but that a final agreement has not been reached. Neither side in the long-standing, contentious dispute would provide details, including the length or the terms of the deal. Both companies have reportedly indicated that the refusal to discuss the details is a result of the previous contentiousness surrounding the negotiations. KTRK (Channel 13) officials also had no comment on the agreement. The deal comes one day after Time Warner and General Electric-owned NBC reached a retransmission contract that is good through 2008. News that a deal with ABC may be near came Thursday morning during Time Warner's annual shareholders' meeting. Time Warner chairman and CEO Gerald Levin said the two sides had reached an agreement in principle. Time Warner President Richard Parsons told Bloomberg News Service, "We both came to an agreement we mutually find appropriate and beneficial to our companies." But a spokesman for Time Warner Cable emphasized that there is not yet a signed agreement. A Disney spokesman confirmed the truce and said details may be announced in the next few days. On May 1, 3.5 million Time Warner cable customers in seven markets, lost access to ABC, the No. 1-rated network, when talks with Disney broke down over the retransmission agreement. Viewers were forced to do without such ABC programs as General Hospital, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and Houston's most popular 10 p.m. newscast. Time Warner restored the ABC stations, including Houston's KTRK, to the lineup 38 hours later, agreeing to extend an existing retransmission agreement to July 15. The Federal Communications Commission then ruled that Time Warner had violated FCC rules when it yanked the ABC stations during the May sweeps. Penalties are still to be determined. The two parties have been squabbling over retransmission rightssince the 1999 agreement expired Dec. 31. Disney/ABC originally wanted Time Warner to carry additional Disney-owned networks -- including SoapNet, Toon Disney, Lifetime Movies and ESPN2 -- and for The Disney Channel to move from a premium to basic cable tier. Time Warner had said Disney was asking for an exorbitant per-subscriber fee that would have cost $100 million over 10 years. ------------------ Stay Cool...
