Watchdog

With all due respect to Mr. Plaxico Burress, nothing I write about him or anything else in the Friday paper will be as important as this story from Multichannel News.

It's about a skirmish between Cablevision and Disney / ESPN that if I understand this correctly means Cablevision wants to radically alter the way TV content is packaged and distributed.

Since I started on the beat three years ago - well before Cablevision bought Newsday - I have been in a small minority of heretics who favor a la carte programming or at least more flexibility in cable offerings. It won't be easy, but we revolutionaries do have some powerful fellow travelers, such as FCC chairman Kevin Martin and Cablevision chairman Charles Dolan.

This is fascinating stuff to the many TV distribution nerds in WatchDog Nation, even if it understandably makes most normal readers' and editors' eyes glaze over.

Stay tuned!