CV had no choice but to disavow Mr. Dolan's grievance with the FCC. The fact that Mr. Dolan even filed such a grievance is virtually unheard of and highly improper on HIS side. He is the Chairman of the Board of a corporation (already under an informal SEC investigation I might add over this whole VOOM spin-off) that entered into a LEGALLY BINDING AGREEMENT with E*. The board APPROVED the entering into of that agreement. Obviously, for the Chairman of the Board of CV to then challenge that very same agreement leaves CV open to major legal and financial repercussions to E*. Definately a CYA move on CV's part, but one that had to be done for the corporation's protection.
While I appreciate VOOM customers have the desire to maintain your service, Cablevision has a responsibility to its shareholders, and to its employees (of which CV has almost as many employees as it does VOOM customers), AND to its existing 3 MILLION cable customers.
While VOOM21 is nice.. it's not the do-all, end-all of HD programming for the future. The fact of the matter is, Mr. Dolan is behind the times in providing satellite service overall.. E* and D* already have that market covered quite nicely and in order for VOOM to get the 250K+ customers it needs to in order to even hit a yearly break-even, never mind a profit.. it has to offer something substantially more beneficial to E* and D* customers than what they already have. VOOM just doesn't have the draw for that.
As to programming, Dolan is slightly ahead of his time, but in order to really "pitch" the programming, you have to have customers. It's a vicious cycle.
Ultimately, IMHO, Voom will be shut down permanently. The damage this is doing to CV's reputation as a company, and the visibility as this company as a potential governance problem is too great for the board members to allow to continue. Again, there are millions of customers and stockholders and thousands upon thousands of employees to consider... and while Dolan's past brilliance in bringing innovative products to market is commendable and practically legendary, in this scenario, again imho, he is being incredibly short-sighted and frankly, obtuse, and is using VOOM as a personal weapon against his son, while jeopardizing the future of the CV business as a whole. Ultimately, you VOOM subscribers will be able to transfer your service to another provider. You will also ultimately get lots of HD channels, you will just need to have just a teensy bit of patience. VOOM/Cablevision employees are the ones who will suffer for this little game of "I'm a dog with a bone" between James and Charles Dolan... and no one in these boards really seems to pay attention to any of THEM, all you all seem to care about is how many channels of HD you can watch on your $1,000+ television sets... when the VOOM employees lose their jobs, they'll be lucky to find another, if they even CAN find another (particularly with the CV name on their resumes) and they won't be able to afford to buy HD televisions (99% of VOOM employees don't have HDTV, but of course James and Charles do).
