We just saw a Reuters dispatch reporting that Fox and Time Warner Cable have ended their heavily publicized feud over carriage fees, so viewers won't miss out on their college bowl games this week.

But another major cable company is duking it out with a network over carriage fees: Cablevision and Scripps Network disagree as to the value of two Scripps' channels–HGTV and the Food Network–so both were yanked from Cablevision's channel lineup on New Year's Day.

Each side accuses the other of being unreasonable. Scripps says its offerings are worth far more than the 25 cents per subscriber per month that Cablevision pays them, claiming this makes them among the lowest-paid networks in the industry. (For context, we've seen estimates that ESPN gets close to $4 a month per subscriber from many cable companies.) Cablevision expressed regrets that Scripps has rejected its "fair and reasonable proposals" because of the networks' own financial difficulties.

In reporting on this, we're not taking sides (as one commenter suggested in my previous blog on the Fox/Time Warner dispute), but sharing news that affects millions of consumers and gives some insight into the behind-the-scenes negotations that many of us never knew about.

Both this disagreement and the one just ended between Fox and TWC could become more common because of the decline in ad revenues, which could certainly be one factor prompting networks to look for more revenues elsewhere–including carriage fees from TV service providers. So some day, one of your favorite stations could be in the cross-hairs.–Eileen McCooey