Time Warner Cable’s online streaming apps that deliver dozens of national cable networks to authenticated cable TV subscribers have never included local broadband television channels, until now.

The cable operator announced it has added 26 local stations to the lineup, but they are viewable only if you have Time Warner Cable service in the New York City region.

The new channels include primary over the air stations and digital “sub-channels” that include niche, classic, ethnic, and special interest programming:

• WCBS HDTV (CBS)
• WNBC HDTV (NBC)
• NBC NY Nonstop
• WNYW HD (Fox)
• WABC HDTV (ABC)
• Live Well HD
• WABC News Now
• WWOR HD (My9)
• WPIX-HD (PIX11)
• WPXN HD (ION)
• WXTV HD (Univision)
• WFUT HD (Telefutura)
• WNJU HD (Telemundo)
• WFME
• WLIW (PBS)
• World
• WLNY (TV 10/55)
• WMBC
• WNJN HD (or WNJB or NJN1) – PBS
• WNYE (NYC TV Life)
• WRNN
• WNET (Thirteen HD)
• V-ME
• Create
• Kids13
• Rise (Al Jazeera)

Time Warner says they have an interest in expanding local station streaming in other cities sometime this year.  When we know which cities and stations will be included, we will pass them along.

Last week’s shocking development that Cablevision, a major cable operator in greater New York City, New Jersey and Connecticut is not going to raise rates in 2012 is bad news for other cable operators itching to raise rates once again this year.

Cablevision’s decision was made as the company continues to battle Verizon FiOS, the phone company’s fiber-to-home-service across its service area.  Verizon has been playing hardball with Time Warner Cable, Comcast, and Cablevision in its metro New York service area, offering up to $500 in rebates to sign new customers.  That level of vicious competition has been great for consumers, but lousy for Wall Street.

Investors were not pleased with Cablevision’s pass on rate hikes and its intention to invest a lot more in system upgrades than originally planned.  Wall Street loves increased revenue and hates it when companies spend it on their customers.

With all of this competition breaking out, Comcast and Time Warner Cable may be more than a little uncomfortable sitting down at an antitrust hearing later this month to discuss their new agreement with Verizon to cross-market cable and mobile service.  In return for the cable industry signaling they will never compete with Verizon’s mobile phone offering, Verizon has generously purchased the cable industry’s leftover spectrum and agreed to pitch cable TV subscriptions to Verizon Wireless customers.  With this new “non-aggression treaty,” will there still be a need to offer $500 gift cards and cut-rate prices to attract new customers?  Consumer groups think not.

A greater percentage of Cablevision’s service area is served by Verizon’s fiber network than either Time Warner Cable or Comcast.  Competition is forcing Cablevision to rethink the usual cable industry plan for financial success — force channels customers don’t want and raise rates up to 5% a year to pay for the “increased costs of doing business.”  Consumers are fed up with $150 monthly cable bills and will take Verizon up on an offer than cuts rates $50 a month and hands over up to $500 just for saying “yes” to FiOS.

The cable company best known for serving suburban New York City.

Cablevision Industries has cried “uncle” in light of relentlessly aggressive competition from Verizon Communications, which offers its fiber to the home FiOS service in much of the cable operator’s service area.

Cablevision’s 4th quarter and year-end financial results, reported earlier today, are underwhelming investors.  Cablevision executives warned the company will have lower cash flow in 2012 due to increased investments in set-top boxes, network upgrades, and more importantly — no planned subscriber rate increases this year.

Some highlights:

Video – Losing Customers Like Everyone Else: Cablevision lost 14,000 video customers in the last quarter, many to Verizon FiOS and ongoing cord-cutting.  Analysts expected just 9,000 defections.  Cablevision will soon launch both HBO and Max Go online video for their customers nationwide.  Additional on-demand video options, online and off, are also anticipated.

Broadband – Cablevision finally admitted its own network was responsible for last year’s faltering broadband speeds that delivered poor marks in ongoing FCC speed tests.  The company originally denied the speed test results were accurate.  Today CEO James Dolan told investors the company invested in its broadband network to improve speeds and service.  Cablevision feels strongly it must compete effectively with Verizon to survive.  The company added 20,000 high-speed data customers and 31,000 phone subscribers in the quarter.  The company is doing well allowing customers easy access to broadband speed upgrades.

Wi-Fi – Cablevision sees strong value in its wireless broadband network as customers increasingly take their content mobile and need connectivity to the web.

Upgrades – CEO Jim Dolan said 2012 will be “a year of investment” in Cablevision upgrades and improvements.  The company is even accelerating projects originally envisioned for 2013.  Cablevision will continue to expand its “next day” installation offer across the eastern United States by the end of the first quarter.

Promotions – The escalating war of promotions between Verizon and Cablevision are likely to cease as Cablevision yanks their most aggressive new customer offers.  Earlier this year, Verizon was pitching a two year triple play offer that included an incredible $500 prepaid card rebate as part of the promotion.  “I don’t think you’ll see those [low introductory rates from Cablevision] again ever,” said Dolan.

“The main theme that people should take away from the call today is that we continue to be focused on moving the business in a direction where we both retain existing subscribers and have attractive, economically sensible offers for new subscribers,” said Cablevision chief financial officer Gregg Seibert.

Both sides agree Time Warner Cable needs to add a new music channel, one owned by MSG parent Cablevision Industries, to your cable lineup.

Some suspicious Buffalo hockey fans suspect the real reason for the sudden focus towards a weekend resolution of a nearly two month dispute that kept MSG off Time Warner Cable customers’ screens since Jan. 1 is the fact the New York (City) Knicks are winning some basketball games and player Jeremy Lin is enjoying his “15 minutes of fame” in the national media spotlight.  Both companies announced the latest round of negotiations, held in New York City, have brought an end to the dispute.

Now that MSG is back on Time Warner Cable, neither company is getting a round of applause for finally reaching a deal.  In fact, a key provision of the settlement requires that the cable company add a new network — Fuse — to the cable lineup.  That means Time Warner Cable customers will eventually pay for a music channel they never asked to receive.

The New York Daily News is just the latest newspaper to put fans’ frustrations into print:

[MSG and Time Warner Cable] don’t give a damn about you.

[…] Fans once apathetic over the blackout and the lethargic Knicks are now fired up and vocal. They are calling TWC and MSG. They are making their feelings known inside the Valley of the Stupid, too.

At this point they are having little impact. The two sides said they recently met. How long? Five minutes? The response from the suits at both companies is the same. Their propaganda never changes. They are more interested in gift-wrapping their problem.

Instead of locking itself in a room for around-the-clock negotiating, TWC is taking fans to a Knicks game in Charlotte. Or MSG, catering to the Asian market it suddenly discovered, is throwing a Knicks viewing party at a Chinatown restaurant. This is known as manipulation. These are nothing more than visuals. They don’t change a damn thing.

The song remains the same: TWC says MSG is looking for a 53% increase in subscriber fees, which now, according to industry analysts, average just over $2.63 per customer. MSG responds by saying TWC is lying. TWC says in September MSG agreed to a 6.5% increase. MSG says that’s a lie, too.

Someone is lying. Everyone is lying. That’s part of the spin. Instead of taking it out on both sides for shafting you, they want you to choose sides, identify a bad guy. Don’t. When two lying swines are fighting in the slop, only a sucker would try to intervene.

After nearly two months of cable subscribers complaining they were paying for a sports channel they were not getting, everyone –and– the governor got involved.  But perhaps nothing motivated a resolution more than the sudden media spotlight on Knicks’ player Jeremy Lin, dubbed Linsanity.

“Linsanity helped,” Chris Marangi, a portfolio manager at Gamco Investors told Bloomberg News.  The investment firm owns about 5 million MSG shares and 500,000 Time Warner Cable shares. “Time Warner Cable realistically couldn’t have dropped MSG — it’s too important to too many fans in New York to not be carried. Both sides probably gave a little.”

While state politicians thanked each other for a “job well done,” Time Warner Cable subscribers won’t be getting a refund for a channel missing from their lineup for eight weeks.  But they will likely face a higher rate increase in 2013, in part to pay for a music channel few knew existed and even fewer wanted.

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WIVB Buffalo Fans React to MSG Deal 2-19-12.mp4[/flv]

WIVB in Buffalo explores the fallout of Time Warner Cable and MSG’s near-two-month dispute.  (2 minutes)

While simultaneously complaining about the spiraling costs of sports programming such as MSG Networks, the nation’s two largest cable operators are planning to cut checks worth $80 million to help bail the NY Mets baseball team out of some of its long term debt.

The New York Times reports both Comcast and Time Warner Cable are preparing to funnel funds into the team through regional sports network SNY.

Time Warner Cable and Comcast are nearing a plan to finance SNY’s purchase of four shares in the Mets, worth $80 million, said one person e with knowledge of the plan who was not authorized to speak publicly.

[…] That means they will have much-needed cash to pay off their substantial debts. But it would be a slightly quirky way of doing it. The deal would mean 16 percent of the Mets would be owned by SNY. The Mets’ parent company, Sterling Equities, owns 70 percent of the network.

[…] Lee Berke, the president of a media consulting company, said that Time Warner Cable and Comcast “don’t want to see the team stumble as it has been, because it directly impacts what they’re putting on TV. This is shaping up as a multiyear downswing for the Mets, and this is a way to keep them above water.”

[…] As for Time Warner Cable and Comcast, it was not immediately clear why they would not invest directly in the Mets. But the two companies clearly want to put money into Wilpon’s financially beleaguered hands (the club has lost some $120 million in the last two years), even if it has to be routed through SNY, to ensure that the team meets its $200 million goal.

[…] Together, Time Warner Cable and Comcast own about 30 percent of SNY. The network started carrying Mets games in 2006.

That investment comes at the same time cable operators are increasingly vocal about sports programming costs.

“ESPN, through … sheer muscle, has been able to say to us, ‘You will carry this service on the lowest level subscription you offer, and you will make all of them pay for it,’” Matt Polka, CEO of the American Cable Association, a trade group told Newsweek. “My next-door neighbor is 74, a widow. She says to me, ‘Why do I have to get all that sports programming?’ She has no idea that in the course of a year, for just ESPN and ESPN2, she is sending a check to Disney for about $70. She would be apoplectic if she knew … Ultimately, there’s going to be a revolt over the cost. Or policymakers will get involved, because the costs of these things are so out of line with cost of living that someone’s going to put up a stop sign.”

Cable analysts continue to be astonished by an inflation rate in sports programming rates that rivals health care costs.

“Every time [there is] a huge increase we can’t believe it, and then there’s another huge increase,” says Laura Martin, an analyst with investment bank Needham & Co. “The rapidly rising cost of sports, especially the new NFL contracts, increases the likelihood that sports will be forced by the government to be on a different tier within three years, by our estimates.”

Cable industry investment in sporting teams is now becoming a familiar headline.  In early January, the Los Angeles Times reported Time Warner Cable was considering buying the Los Angeles Dodgers at a price that could exceed $2 billion.  It would compliment two new regional sports cable channels Time Warner plans to launch in southern California featuring the Los Angeles Lakers.