Cablevision vs. Verizon

Last year when Cablevision acquired Newsday, I knew it was only a matter of time before they would block the site to customers only.

Beginning next Wednesday if you don't subscribe to Newsday or aren't an Optimum customer it will cost you 5$ a week for access on newsday.com

Newsday isn't the first site to limit their site without a fee such as, The New York Times. Why should you buy a Newsday if you can easily access it for FREE online? But who wants to pay to go on a site to read the news? I wouldn't. Especially since its Newsday, their information is usually loaded with a bunch of errors and inaccuracies. Everything that Newsday has is from yesterday morning. By the time I read it I already know the missing information that wasn't known when it was written.

Cablevision said their reason was that ads had decline because of the economy and that they really just wanted to focus on Long Islanders. But every page in the paper is their own advertisement for their "Triple Play". Can we say waste of money?

I don't think Newsday's or Cablevision's reason to require subscription to their site is the same reasons why The New York Times has a subscription policy on their site.

For many years, Cablevision felt very threatened by Satellite companies. I think when they finally won over that competition, and built confidence by taking over the landline industries...they just seemed so undefeated. This company is the biggest monopoly going. When Verizon was granted the right to begin their Fiber optics network, I noticed Cablevision gearing their advertising towards businesses instead of residential customers.

Verizon, I don't think is going to be going anywhere, they are really trying to take Cablevision down. Cablevision's one strength was they were the only company that carried their channel News 12. Even though Verizon is unable to get that channel, they decided to launch their own local news channel. When I heard that over the summer, it was surprising, and what a brave move on their part.

Back to Cablevision, I believe that blocking their Newsday site is just another way of blocking Verizon. For the longest time I noticed that every other page in the paper was Verizon and then "Optimum Triple Play". I thought, what the?? That makes no sense, why advertise your competitor. Finally, at the end of the summer, Newsday decided to cut Verizon ads.

This topic is something I love reading about, there are just so many ways Cablevision has tried to be the only "Long Island" company and never really had true competition until now. As a Cablevision and Newsday customer, I like to see the competition. Being on the sidelines, I enjoy watching Cablevision try holding their weak acquisitions, while fighting against the tenacious Verizon Corporation.