John Montgomery Presents This Week's	May 6, 2000	Creep Logo by Alan Fraser
	Time Warner and Disney
	I Want My ABC

Last Monday night had all the makings of a couch potato's wet dream. You could start off the night with the coolest man on TV: Regis Philbin! Recently liberated from his other gig as Kathie Lee Gifford's rather dull sidekick, Rege bought some great looking suits and somehow captured the imagination of millions of Americans with his "Who Wants to be A Millionaire" show on ABC. To celebrate sweeps week, where all the networks compete for viewers so they can increase their advertising rates, Rege was running a celebrity version of "Millionaire". And guess who his first celebrity was going to be? None other than the vomit-triggering queen herself, Kathie Lee!  Imagine how much joy you could have booing, hissing and throwing stuff at the TV screen every time it showed a close up of her embarrassing herself by revealing her congenital lack of intelligence to the prime time audience.

And if that wasn't enough stimulation for your mindless entertainment gland, next up was the conclusion of the "Arabian Nights" mini-series. Ali Baba, Aladdin, genies, special effects and a cavalcade of dark, exotic babes wrapped in pastel-colored sheets! Who could have imagined that a Monday night without football could be so great? Grab a six pack and a couple of two pound bags of Doritos! You're in heaven for the whole night! You won't even need the remote. Just park it on ABC and let it ride. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, if you were one of 3.5 million cable customers in certain selected areas of the country, when you tried to tune in, you were rudely shocked to find the ugly blue message shown above filling your TV screen. What the hell is this? What does Disney have to do with ABC? Why don't they want me to watch it? Does Mickey Mouse find Kathie Lee as repulsive as I do? And what's with Time Warner? I paid my cable bill. In fact, I keep paying their increased rates and keep accepting their ridiculous new channels (The Paper Or Plastic Channel, The Hair Club For Men Channel, The Tattoos In Really Interesting Places Channel, etc.) just so I can keep watching those "Brady Bunch" festivals on Nick at Nite. I want Rege and all I'm getting is this maddening blue screen and I'm really pissed off!

The explanation: The new conglomerate, behemoth, monopolistic companies are the big bullies at the beach and you are the 90-pound weakling getting sand kicked into your eyes. Disney, which owns ABC, and Time Warner, which owns Time Magazine, Warner Brothers, CNN, Ted Turner and Jane Fonda, got into some form of high stakes pissing contest this week which resulted in the ABC network's shows being yanked from Time Warner's cable system for about 36 hours in those certain areas.

I don't know the details of the dispute. I don't know which of the two companies exhibited what illegal / unethical / immoral behavior, or what the FCC rulings are, or what hearings Congress will have. Furthermore, I don't care. What I do know is that a pack of well paid, overfed, greasy executives didn't do their jobs and it was the consumer who paid the price. These arrogant pigs have way too much power and have no problems in flaunting it. Their negotiations surely went along the lines of

• Disney: "Hey, you Time Warner twits. You want ABC? Pay me $600 million for these other six crappy channels that no one wants and kiss my ass while you're at it."
• Time Warner: "Hey, you Disney dicks. I'll cut all your channels off my cable system and cut your balls off at the same time."

And that's my final answer.