In a last-ditch attempt to solve the ongoing dispute, YES offered to let an arbitrator immediately resolve its row with Cablevision, whose 3 million customers won't see baseball's New York Yankees until a settlement is reached.
The offer from Leo Hindery, chairman of the YES Network, comes a day after both sides blamed each other for the collapse of the interim agreement reached earlier this month. The 26-time World Series champions open the season on Monday night in Toronto.
Under terms of the network's proposal, Cablevision would for 90 days receive the same contract terms as the area's other cable operators, including AOL Time Warner Inc. and Comcast Corp. That means the area's largest cable operator would pay YES $2.12 per subscriber, or about $6.4million a month.
Meantime, an arbitrator would immediately hear the dispute, which centers on whether YES would be a basic channel or made available on a premium tier. YES wants to be a basic channel because, that way, all of Cablevision's customers would pay for it. As a premium channel only those who want it would pay.
Cablevision chief James Dolan blamed the collapse of the interim agreement on Yankees owner George Steinbrenner and Goldman Sachs Group, which owns 40 percent of YES. According to Dolan, the network wanted more money and didn't want to release its financial information to an arbitrator.
The arbitrator's decision would be binding, and it would be retroactive to March 31 of this year.
