Well, now it’s really getting ugly. When the clock struck midnight last night, Fox stations WNYW Channel 5 and WOR Channel disappeared from Cablevision homes in New York. (The two sides, who have been locked in an escalating dispute for some time, each accused the other of pulling the channels.) Instead of a scheduled episode of The Simpsons on channel five and Tyler Perry’s House of Payne on channel nine, an indignant voice-over announcer, on behalf of Cablevision, read a list of grievances against News Corp., accusing the company of “extortion” and “holding their own viewers hostage.” The two parties are meeting today at noon. Surely the eight middle-school students staying up late to watch The Simpsons have learned an important lesson about corporate greed. [Media Decoder/NYT, CNN]
