Broadcasters Battling for Cable Fees

But the fees account for just 5 percent of station revenue, according to SNL Kagan — hardly a savior for broadcasters. Cable channels, meanwhile, are on track to earn almost $28 billion from fees next year.

Creating a new front in the fight, networks like CBS and Fox are telling affiliates to start sharing the retransmission fees they receive from carriers, too. They figure that because they provide marquee programming, they should share in the fees.

“There are certain affiliates that are totally on board and get it, and there are certain affiliates that object to it,” Mr. Moonves said. “It will come to a head as the deals with station groups come up,” a multiyear process.

Between Fox and Time Warner Cable, the fight is not about whether Fox should be paid, but about how much. The cable company says that it is willing to pay for retransmission, and that it is only balking at Fox’s asking price. “There’s no question we’ve seen an increase in desperation on the broadcast side,” Ms. Witmer said.

Ahead of several renewal fights, the company called on customers to “get tough” in TV commercials and print ads that claimed that networks like Fox were “demanding price increases as high as 300 percent.” The commercials played like political ads, complete with ornaments falling off an animated Christmas tree.

Fox responded with a campaign Web site of its own that said it was merely asking for “fair value compensation.” It noted that TNT, a cable channel with a fraction of Fox’s budget, earns about $1 per subscriber. On Monday night it informed viewers across the country about the feud in graphics on the screen during the medical drama “House.”

Ms. Witmer said there were crucial differences between Fox, which is available over the air, and TNT, which is a “cable product.” She said Time Warner Cable was concerned about the amount of programming that Fox puts on the Internet, undermining the cable business model. Unlike broadcasters, she added, cable channels provide carriers with advertising time.

Fox will argue in the coming days that Time Warner Cable can easily afford to pay more for its signal. Mr. Hopkins said Monday that the cable operator’s rate increases in New York alone, which go into effect in January, “would be more than enough to pay for Fox in all these markets.”

A Time Warner Cable spokeswoman, Alex Dudley, said the “single biggest factor in rate increases are egregious acts by programmers like Fox.”

Caught in the middle are TV viewers. Last week Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, called on both sides to strike a deal because, he said, “millions of football fans are depending on it.”

In a letter to Mr. Britt and Mr. Carey, he suggested that the stations remain available to cable customers if the two sides fail to reach a deal by Jan. 1. For how long? Mr. Kerry wrote, “Through the college bowl season.”