MediaFile

We were not completely surprised when Fox Soccer Channel went dark on Sunday afternoon while we were watching West Ham take on Chelsea. (It’s not that the cable bills hadn’t been paid). Seemed the most likely cause was the  really bad snowstorm here in New York and the rest of the U.S. northeast.

But when we noticed that Fox Soccer Espanol, Speed Channel and, for a short while, FX were also down…  well, we couldn’t help wonder if the ruckus between Time Warner Cable and Fox Networks had come to a head and that the great dark screen battle of 2010 had started early.  (Adding to our conspiracy theory: Fox’s news channels were unaffected yesterday, and neither Fox News nor Fox Business are part of the current carriage fisticuffs between TWC and Fox. Hmmmm).

After all, Fox said last week that TWC might pull its broadcast network and entertainment channels because they’ve been unable to reach agreement on fees. TWC for its part thinks Fox wants too much money. And both sides are running marketing campaigns slamming the other. So the idea that everything went black because of a their dispute wasn’t all that farfetched.

But our suspicions were wrong:  We’ve been assured by a TWC spokesman that it was a small and temporary problem with the Fox channels was indeed weather-related and not a test-run of what a blackout would look like.

It could still go all dark on Dec 31st when the Fox contracts expire. But neither side wants that to happen and they’ll likely come to agreement in the early hours of 2010 as TWC did with Viacom last year.

From the bearish forecast department: Screen Digest, a media research firm, issued an outlook today predicting a 5 percent decline in online advertising in 2009. Folks, we’re not talking about newspapers or network television or radio here. We’re talking about the Web.

Screen Digest put out the forecast in response to the IAB’s recent report on 2008, which showed Web advertising rose 10 percent. But the number that turned heads over at Screen Digest was IAB’s fourth quarter figure, which put online growth at a mere 2.6 percent.

Here’s what Screen Digest says:

Following the fourth quarter 2008 tipping-point, Screen Digest has revised its 2009-2010 forecasts for online advertising in the US. We now predict that all categories and subcategories except video will decline in 2009. Banner advertising (-8.8 per cent) will not be fully compensated by the double digit growth of online video, so that the Display category will be down 3.6 per cent. Search will shrink by two per cent and non-Display categories such as Classifieds will experience double digit falls. Overall, the total internet advertising market will shrink by five per cent (-4.8) in 2009 and only stabilize (+0.4 per cent) in 2010.

News Corp’s U.S. television network Fox is going to the Supreme Court to fight for its right to broadcast freely — whatever the Federal Communications Commission has to say about it.

Chief Operating Officer Peter Chernin will offer a preview of the network’s thinking tonight when he addresses the Media Institute, which is honoring him for his leadership on free speech. This comes in advance of the Nov. 4 court date in FCC v. Fox Television Stations.

Here’s the gist of the case, as The New York Times described it:

When Cher appeared on the Billboard Music Awards in 2002, she used a four-letter word connoting sex. The next year, on the same show, banter between Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie included that word and another obscenity. In Federal Communications Commission v. Fox Television Stations, No. 07-582, the court will decide whether the F.C.C. has the power to punish broadcasters for airing “fleeting expletives.”

Esquire magazine is running a Q&A with News Corp chief Rupert Murdoch, in which in the international media tycoon talks about his upbringing, what makes Murdoch Murdoch, his new crown jewel The Wall Street Journal, Fox News and a host of other subjects. Without further ado (warning: look out for some inappropriate language):

Murdoch on his political ideology and the crisis blowing through multiple financial institutions:

I’m not a knee-jerk conservative. I passionately believe in free markets and less government, but not to the point of being a libertarian. After this financial crisis, there are going to be some restrictions. I’m frightened they’ll go too far, but certainly there should be something.