Millions of cable subscribers cannot see ESPN right now as Disney and Spectrum are in a sendoff over carriage fees. The channel went dark on Spectrum during pregame coverage of Utah’s victory over Florida Thursday.
On Friday morning in Cleveland, Ken Carman said he was looking forward to being able to watch the game after his son’s football practice and didn’t have much warning that he couldn’t.
“I was at football practice. My phone buzzed and [Awful Announcing] had sent an article and it said that ESPN could be kicked off Spectrum by Thursday,” he said on 92.3 The Fan. “I thought it meant, because I was in the middle of stuff, I thought it meant next Thursday. Like next week. I was like, ‘Well, that would certainly be something.’ And then we’re on our way home and [Awful Announcing] sends a text and I and I hit the button on the truck and it says, ‘The college football game just got blacked out’. I went, ‘What?’ And I got home and sure as hell you weren’t watching it. It wasn’t shown.”
The play-by-play crew of Chris Fowler and Kirk Herbstreit threw down to Holly Rowe for a report from the field. As she went to throw it back to the booth, the screen went black. Carman says that was no coincidence.
“That had to be on purpose,” he said. “They had to be on the phone going, ‘we’re going to pull it, we’re gonna pull it.’ And they went right from Holly Rowe and that was it.”
Co-host Anthony Lima said that we have seen a lot of carriage disputes in our lifetimes. Usually, there is a prolonged period of warning as both sides try to build goodwill and convince the public that the other side is in the wrong. That didn’t seem to happen this time.
Carman added that usually, these disputes either get solved at the last possible minute or are resolved very quickly after the channel is pulled off of cable. He said it would behoove Spectrum to make sure that is the case this time too.
“The NFL starts next week,” he said. “It’s like ‘you better get them games on there. You better get them damn games on there. You better figure something out.’ Like we’ve always said it. Live sports and news of the last bastion of live television like that.”
Spectrum has said that it will not cave into ESPN’s demands an it is prepared to move forward without Disney-owned networks in its lineup if necessary.
