By Paul Thomasch
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Time Warner Cable extended a deal to carry CBS Corp's television stations, CBS said on Tuesday, avoiding what could have been another heated industry dispute.
CBS did not disclose details of the agreement, but it comes just days after its sister company Viacom Inc threatened to pull its cable channels from Time Warner's 13 million homes because of a disagreement over a separate deal.
The Time Warner-Viacom dispute was eventually resolved, but underscored the rising tensions between networks who provide programing and the cable operators that transmit that programing into living rooms around the country.
CBS Chief Executive Les Moonves has made new broadcast deals a priority, specifically insisting that he wants cable operators to pay CBS for the right to carry its stations in what are known as retransmission deals. In the past, deals involving cash payments have been rare.
Moonves declined to comment on the particulars of the deal with Time Warner Cable, other than to say, "We're very pleased with the results."
Terms of the deal call for retransmission consent for CBS's owned and operated TV stations and the carriage of Showtime programing to be extended through 2013.
A person familiar with the talks, meanwhile, said that no cash would be exchanged in the deal, but that Time Warner Cable had agreed to run advertisements on CBS stations as a form of payment.
While CBS has previously reached around 25 deals with smaller to mid-size cable companies, until now it has not announced a deal with one of the major cable operators.
It still needs to work out agreements with a number of the other big operators, including Charter Communications Inc, Cablevision Systems Corp, and Comcast Corp.
Moonves, in an interview, said active discussions were taking place with some of those companies, and that the deal with Time Warner, the second-largest operator, should help set the stage for other deals.
"Obviously, getting a company the size of Time Warner and the power of Time Warner to do a deal that is satisfactory for us and for them is a major accomplishment," he said.
If successful, CBS's efforts to get paid would make it an exception in an industry where cable operators have declined to pay cash to carry broadcasters' stations.
Instead, the issue is largely sidestepped. Cable operators hold the line on not paying broadcasters for TV stations, but offset that by raising the rates they are willing pay broadcasters to carry their cable networks.
As an example, cable operators might pay fees to Walt Disney Co to broadcast ESPN in exchange for free transmission of its ABC network.
CBS does not own any major cable channels, however, other than Showtime, which does not receive fees since its a pay channel.
Time Warner Cable, meanwhile, has appeared willing to play hardball in talks with broadcasters. Not only did discussions with Viacom go down to the wire last week, but in October it was involved in a very public dispute with LIN TV Corp.
That fight over retransmission consent resulted in LIN TV pulling its free-to-air broadcast of local affiliate stations of NBC, Fox and CBS from the Time Warner Cable system.
(Additional reporting by Yinka Adegoke; Editing by Derek Caney)
