If Time Warner is your cable company, your local Fox TV station might go dark at midnight.
TV stations coexist with Cable TV under what is called the “Must Carry” rule… a TV station can either choose to force a cable operator to carry their station for FREE, or they can demand payment for their programming, with the option that the cable operator can then say “No, thanks”. That’s where this is – Fox wants more money than Time Warner is willing to pay. The FCC seems to think it needs to get involved – we don’t want people missing their football games, you know.
Well, this “crisis” appears to have been averted– for the next 3 years, anyway.
This rule apparently only applies to Fox owned-and-operated stations. Fox affiliates owned by other companies negotiate their own deals, and Murdoch/News Corp. can’t really draw any revenue from the cable companies through them. He probably would if he could– but he’d have to work through franchise agreements with individual stations (a $1 surcharge for every cable subscriber the station can find) and not directly.