Fox, Cablevision end impasse

A feud between two media giants that kept millions of cable TV subscribers in the New York City area from watching Major League Baseball and NFL football ended Saturday evening just in time for Game 3 of the World Series.

News Corp.’s Fox Broadcasting and Cablevision Systems Corp. reached an agreement in principle to return Fox TV stations to Cablevision homes more than two weeks after Fox pulled the plug. At issue were fees that Fox wanted Cablevision to pay to carry the network signal as well as the feeds for cable channels Fox Business Network, Spanish sports channel Fox Deportes and National Geographic Wild.

Although the two sides have reached an accord, that doesn’t mean either was happy with the outcome.

In a statement, Cablevision blasted the Federal Communications Commission for not getting involved in the dispute and criticized Fox for heavy-handed demands.

“In the absence of any meaningful action from the FCC, Cablevision has agreed to pay Fox an unfair price for multiple channels of its programming including many in which our customers have little or no interest,” Cablevision said.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.