Fox and all of its affiliated stations may soon disappear from Time Warner's cable offerings thanks to a fee dispute between the two companies. News Corporation, Fox's parent company, has been pushing Time Warner for subscriber fees that typically only get paid to cable-only channels, potentially amounting to close to $1 billion. Given that TV providers have been facing accusations of unfair treatment as of late, however, Time Warner may have to shell out if it wants to keep Fox around.

Some Time Warner cable subscribers (including a number of our own readers) began seeing notices last week from the cable provider that there may not be any Fox programming come January 1. This doesn't just mean no more American Idol (which may or may not be a good thing)—it also means no more Glee, House, Family Guy, or college bowl games, among numerous other shows. And don't go thinking it's just the Fox network; this includes the Fox Soccer Channel, the regional Fox Sports channels, FX, and Speed too.

What News Corp. wants, according to the New York Times, is $1 per subscriber per month. This is similar to what cable-only channels get, but it seems the reason Fox gets left out on these fees is because it's largely a broadcast network—people can pick up Fox Network and its plethora of shows with an antenna. Time Warner, of course, doesn't want to pay these fees, and has made it clear that it will have to pass those costs onto subscribers; Time Warner chief programming officer Melinda Witmer told the Times that the fees will "without a doubt translate to increasing costs for consumers that buy packages of programming."

Though this seems like just a (billion-dollar) tiff between two media giants, cable providers have been under fire for what some consider to be unfair treatment of certain channels for some time. In mid-2008, the NFL Network filed a complaint against Comcast, saying that the company discriminates against the sportscaster by putting it on a higher-priced tier while broadcasting Comcast's own sports channels on a basic tier. The fight has been kicked back and forth between the courts and the Federal Communications Commission, with the FCC eventually stating that the NFL Network's charges had merit. Another fight has been going on between DirecTV and Versus—the contract between the two companies ended earlier this year after Versus allegedly demanded a 20 percent rate hike from DirecTV, but not other providers. DirecTV walked away and the two are still in the (unsuccessful) process of trying to work things out.

As we have seen from the outcome of DirecTV/Versus, as well as the high profile split of NBC and iTunes back in 2007, TV networks are willing to walk away from distributors if they don't get their way—even if only temporarily. However, Fox leaving Time Warner and other distribution networks is a bigger deal than most, and it would benefit both parties—not to mention American Idol fans—to try and work out a deal sooner rather than later.