Knicks Eye 10th Straight Win as Long Island Fans Face RSN Blackout

Optimum TV subscribers on Long Island are scrambling to find an alternative delivery system for Knicks games, as the carriage dispute between the cable provider and MSG doesn’t appear to be headed toward a resolution any time soon.

The MSG feed went dark on Altice’s Optimum systems one minute after midnight on New Year’s Day, and negotiations between the RSN and the operator effectively came to a halt when the signal was pulled. Talks are not expected to resume before the Knicks-Thunder game tips off Friday night, leaving fans out in the cold as Karl-Anthony Towns, Jalen Brunson & Co. look to extend their winning streak to 10.

While MSG has demonstrated its willingness to compromise, offering a reduced carriage fee and proposing a shift to a higher-priced sports tier, Altice thus far has refused the channel’s overtures. Prior to the expiration of its distribution deal, MSG was available via Optimum’s “Everything TV” package, a 200-plus-channel, sports-heavy slate that costs $140 per month—or $160 for first-time subscribers. Other sports nets on the tier include YES Network, SNY, MLB Network, NBA TV and Big Ten Network.

Were Altice to take MSG up on its offer to move up to a new echelon, the RSN could find a new perch on its $180 “Premier TV” suite, which is home to beIN Sports and GOL TV. MSG negotiated a similar tier switcheroo in October, when it re-upped its legacy carriage deal with Verizon’s FiOS TV.

The practice of promoting RSNs to more expensive tiers has been championed by Comcast, which in the last year has shifted the likes of SportsNet Pittsburgh, ROOT Sports Northwest, MASN and the FanDuel Sports channels to its pricier “Ultimate TV” package. Comcast and MSG parted ways in October 2021.

Altice closed out the third quarter of 2024 with 1.94 million video subscribers, which marked a 13% decline compared to the year-ago headcount (2.23 million), a rate of change that’s largely in keeping with greater industry trends. Since the analogous financial period in 2021, the operator has lost 31% of its video customers, which works out to a net loss of 858,200 subscribers. Again, that’s in line with national churn rates, which reflect a 30% drop in video subs over the same period.

Broadband services account for the bulk of Altice’s customer relationships, as the company ended the third quarter with 4.04 million internet subs.

A Long Island carriage fight was never in the cards back when MSG and Knicks owner James Dolan had his family’s Cablevision business in his back pocket. But Dolan closed a deal to sell the carrier to Altice for $17.7 billion in 2016, thereby bringing an end to this highly strategic distribution-content arrangement. Dolan’s father, Charles, who founded Cablevision in 1973—just a year after he introduced the world to what was then better known as “Home Box Office”—died last week at the age of 98.

In a statement issued earlier today, an MSG rep characterized the standoff with Altice as a “pure and simple price gouge” on the operator’s part. The exec went on to note that MSG remains “ready to negotiate in good faith to get our programming back on Optimum.”

Altice returned fire, charging MSG with “demanding exorbitant programming fees.” In what’s become a standard trope during such disputes, the operator went on to claim that the majority of Optimum video customers do not watch MSG programming.

Be that as it may, sports fans out on the Island now face the prospect of a New Year without ready access to the Knicks, Rangers and Isles. Those looking for a bespoke solution and who’d just as soon avoid going through the rigamarole of changing carriers may look to hop on the Gotham Sports streaming option, which will set them back a churn-conscious $41.99 per month, or $359.99 with an annual subscription.

The October launch of the Gotham Sports app effectively brought a close to the short-lived standalone MSG+ platform, which bowed in 2023.

Barring the Comcast breakup, the last time MSG faced a signal interruption of this magnitude was during its 48-day conflict with Time Warner Cable in 2012. As was the case with Altice, the TWC-MSG contract expired on New Year’s. Until the blackout was resolved on Feb. 17 of that same year, more than 1 million subscribers in the New York metro area were shut out of watching Linsanity unfold.

The difference between the 2011-12 Knicks and this season’s crew is that the current incarnation is arguably a championship-caliber team, whereas the long-ago squad was merely a lot of fun to watch.