Disney, Time Warner Cable reach new deal

NEW YORK (WABC) -- The Disney, ABC Television Group and ESPN have reached an agreement with Time Warner cable.

That means the nearly one and a-half million Time Warner customers in our area will not lose our signal.

Time Warner Cable customers will also get access to the sports website ESPN3.com, even if they are not subscribers to the company's Internet plan, without an extra charge.

Among the expanded offerings, Time Warner is launching a new college football channel called "ESPN Goal Line" that gives fans a live peek at games around the nation on Saturdays, a similar offering to the NFL Network's "NFL RedZone." The first program starts Saturday for sports tier subscribers. A similar service called "ESPN Buzzer Beater" will be offered for the college basketball season in January.

Disney also secured carriage of a new 24-hour channel called Disney Junior, a rebranding of its SOAPnet channel, when it launches in 2012.

Carriage of other channels such as Disney Channel, ABC Family, Disney XD and ESPN 3D was included in the wide-ranging agreement.

The deal came after the companies indicated Sunday that there wouldn't be a damaging signal interruption of the kind that cut several minutes off of ABC's Oscar telecast to millions of Cablevision subscribers in a fee dispute in March.

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