Tale Of The Tape

Is anybody paying attention to Cox’s www.MakeThemPlayFair.com website, which the MSO set up Oct. 23 during its public dispute with ESPN? Cox execs say it’s getting its hits, pointing to the site’s 49,800 page views by more than 23,000 individual users in the first two and a half weeks since it launched. Through a link Cox imbedded on the site, consumers can send letters to Congress, ESPN and Fox Sports Net executives. More than 6,630 Cox-generated form letters have been sent as of Nov 10. (Many consumers have added their own comments to the letters as well, Cox says.) If a deal can’t be worked out by early spring, when Cox’s current affiliation deal with ESPN expires, there is a very real chance Cox customers will be bereft of ESPN until the two can come to some sort of deal, which could greatly increase visits to the site. Cox isn’t the first MSO to put up an issue-oriented website during a carriage-fee dispute. In the heyday of Cablevision’s battle with the YES Network, before the Yankees’ 2002 season opened, the New York-based MSO set up a site to let consumers know its side of the story. That site was taken down after a few weeks, when the operator struck an interim deal with the network.