• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, October 7, 2008

Because of their stalemate in negotiations for TV station carriage, both Time Warner Cable and Lin TV Corp. have had to tell viewers where to go to get "CSI," NFL football games, or "Jeopardy."

In the end, maybe both companies are insultingly telling viewers "where to go."

Lin TV and Time Warner Cable are in the midst of their contract dispute concerning Lin's 15 TV stations on Time Warner cable systems. Each party says the other is not negotiating in good faith.

Not wanting to leave TV viewers in the lurch, Lin TV executives have directed their TV customers to Dish Network or Verizon's FiOS TV, both of which have a deal with Lin. For its part, Time Warner has urged viewers to sign up for its own Road Runner broadband service.

Either way, both companies are telling viewers to spend more money to get what they theoretically have already paid for. (Time Warner has given out free old-fashioned rabbit ear antennas -- albeit only 50,000 or so in some markets).

This isn't the first time a cable operator and a TV station owner have come to a standstill with blacked-out signals. There have been similar results from testy negotiations between cable operators and cable networks.

But one wonders when the day will come that a cable operator just says no -- perhaps when the FCC, sometime in the future, views TV stations as average video content programmers, not as a local communication public utility/service that U.S. citizens can use freely.

Maybe that decision will be made when the TV/video programming market evolves into being truly ubiquitous and free -- where free city-wide Wi-Fi systems will exist for everyone, and traditional cable systems and TV stations will be a thing of the past, where true public service announcements can be seen on the Web -- as needed.

Only then will TV viewers be able to tell certain business parties -- who will still be looking to make a buck, perhaps even for the sake of public service -- where to go .