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The agreement between New York's Cablevision and George Steinbrenner's YES network has fallen apart like ace reliever Mariano Rivera's pitching arm.
Two days before the start of the 2003 baseball season, YES has abrogated the interim agreement hammered out between them and Cablevision, after trying to insert into that agreement additional terms favorable to itself, as well as scotch the right of the previously agreed-upon outside arbitrator to examine YES's books to determine the appropriate per-subscriber fee that Cablevision would have paid the network when their long-term deal took effect.
Though YES CEO Leo Hindery is nominally the one who pulled the plug, there's clear evidence that the order to back out, wring more money from a deal at least one of the parties had negotiated in good faith, and betray Yankee fans, came right from the top of the Yankee hierarchy...and you know whom I mean.
Yankee fans should seriously reconsider their devotion to this malevolent organization and, instead, look southeast, to the friendly Borough of Queens, where the local team (playing their infinitely superior brand of designated hitter-less National League baseball) appears, regularly and without controvery), on Fox Sports.
Batter up!
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What's spiteful is for George and YES to bully cable systems to raise the basic cable rate for all their customers to subsidize those customers who actually want the service.
I'm no fan of cable-TV operators, but at least part of the reason for Cablevision's decision to dig in its heels is that no one should have to pay for something they don't want.
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That's Bush League logic (and totally bogus statistics).
Cablevision was to charge $4.95 for the full package of YES, FSNY and MSG, or $1.95 per channel, plus the cost of replacing the cable box. Customers who already subscribed to premium-levels of service would get the sports channels, including YES, at no additional charge.
The mediators who brokered the original deal, and who were accepted by both parties, lay the blame and considerable bad-faith squarely at the feet of George Steinbrenner and the investment firm of Goldman Sachs, which owns 40% of YES.
Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa had hailed the deal as the first step toward cable-TV providers offering their channel line-ups on an a la carte basis, rather than in packages that saddle customers with all sorts of channels they don't want. As such, Steinbrenner and Goldman Sachs's greed will, in the long run, possibly cost all U.S. cable subscribers money and freedom of choice.
I guess, Eric, that you and Steinbrenner, and Goldman Sachs think think it's fair for people who don't want something to subsidize the cost of something for those who do want it.
By that logic, your tax money would be well-spent on providing abortions for poor women who can't afford them...
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Oh, I see, the mediators in the original deal are lying about Steinbrenner's and Goldman's part in the contract flip-flops.
Eric, if you fired a gun whose bullet went through twelve people, you'd complain that it was their fault for getting in the way.
Nothing ever deviates from your narrow, carefully-planned view of the Universe.
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Why shouldn't YES, more than a year ago, have been "big enough" to offer Cablevision and all other cable companies terms that're in line with reality and what other cable channels charge per subscriber?
YES started out by asking for the Moon, and lot of timid cable systems, afraid of losing customers, simply caved-in, even at the cost of alienating subscribers who didn't want the service (figuring, cynically, that hey, we're always raising our rates, anyway; the customers bitch, but they end up paying -- surely part of YES's strategy). Cablevision said, simply, that no one was going to dictate to them how they run their own business, and I say, more power to 'em.
What happened that that rock-ribbed Republican faith in the marketplace, Eric -- sellers have the right to ask for whatever price they want, and buyers have the right to say "no"?
I'll bet that you felt the same way when Enron and Duke Power were gouging their customers in California. After all, the consumers always had the right to say "no" and disconnect their electrical lines...
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It's George's gouging; he thinks the whole world's wired to his whims (by George, how alliterative! Doubly alliterative!).
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Whre do you think the money comes from, Eric? He spends too much of the sucker fans' money.
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You talk of hockey and basketball as though they were even remotely important -- unlike baseball, which is truly cosmic, and only played in its correct, pure form in the National League.
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Confronted by evidence and blamed by the impartial mediators for undermining the deal it had earlier struck with Cablevision, YES has again agreed to terms virtually identical to the earlier arrangement.
You always seem to hitch your little wagon to the shadiest stars, Eric.
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Actually more favorable to YES from my sketchy understanding, but at any rate at least my parents don't have to pay the $10 rate Cablevision wanted to gouge them with one year ago.
I only hitch myself to those who represent greatness.  The Yankees will forever symbolize that in baseball and all of sports.
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