• by David Goetzl  @dgoetzl, August 30, 2010

Disney has stopped encouraging Time Warner Cable customers to cancel their subscriptions. The cable operator, in turn, softened up its "Roll Over or Get Tough" stance. Does that mean ESPN and ABC won't go dark on millions of sets this week? Probably.

What's certain is that the companies agreed that public mudslinging wasn't doing either much good. And they agreed to tone down their rhetoric. A joint statement Sunday said that "significant progress" has been made in their talks to keep Disney programming on the air in TWC homes. And "all our attention" is focused on an agreement to avoid an interruption at 12:01 a.m. Thursday.

On a TWC Web site, the words were placed beneath a graphic indicating that only 6% of what TWC collected from some customers went toward its $1.07 billion net income last year. TWC has used that site, RollOverOrGetTough.com, to drum up support for its position that programmers such as Disney are seeking to overcharge it to carry their channels.

Disney, in turn, stopped offering options for TWC customers on its IHaveChoices.com site. The peacemaking statement replaced encouragement to switch to another distributor, such as DirecTV or Verizon.

Even if an agreement is not reached by Thursday, the sides are likely to continue negotiating and "Baseball Tonight" and "Jimmy Kimmel Live" won't stop mid-show. Disney and TWC have been at odds over how much TWC will pay to offer ESPN and the Disney Channel to its full customer base, as well as the ABC station in New York, Los Angeles and other markets. (TWC is also negotiating terms for Bright House Networks.)

The weekend détente came after the rhetoric escalated between the sides on Friday. TWC was suggesting that Disney has a penchant for yanking channels; meaning that customers moving to another carrier wouldn't be gaining much.

"Already this year, they've pulled the plug on two other TV providers, so switching won't help," a TWC ad said.

TWC was referring to Disney briefly removing ABC from Cablevision homes during the Oscar broadcast, and then pulling HD feeds of four of its channels off Dish Network. Disney has said its deal with Cablevision was long expired, while a court ruling validated its position that Dish had no right to offer the HD channels.

On a TWC blog, a company executive wrote: "If they've done it with those two and they're threatening to do it to us, there's a definite pattern emerging. Switching providers isn't going to get rid of a problem with Disney, when Disney is the problem."

TWC said in its TV ad that it was laboring to cut a deal and it would "keep your channels on the air unless Disney takes them away." TWC then pointed viewers to RollOverOrGetTough.com.

Disney issued a statement Friday saying: "We're very focused on reaching a fair agreement with Time Warner Cable. At this stage, finger-pointing is not constructive in getting a deal done."