Time Warner Wins Appeal Against New York

Time Warner Inc. won an appeals court order blocking New York City from running Fox News Channel and Bloomberg Television on Time Warner cable-TV channels operated by the city. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York upheld a November lower-court ruling that the city violated a franchising agreement by running commercial programs on city channels that Time Warner reserves for “public, educational or governmental” use. New York City Corporation Counsel Paul Crotty said the city might renegotiate the franchise agreement, which expires in 1998, to give it more discretion in programming. It hasn’t decided whether to appeal the ruling. New York tried to air Fox News and Bloomberg on city-run stations after Time Warner rejected Fox in favor of rival news channel MSNBC. New York had argued that New York-based Time Warner was barring Fox News and Bloomberg from its regular commercial channels to protect Time Warner’s Cable News Network channels from competition.