Hey, Cablevision, thanks for nothing. ... We enjoyed the Oscars online just fine

It's amazing—even in settling its retransmission consent dispute with ABC's New York flagship WABC last night, Cablevision found a way to screw over its customers, by not alerting them of the settlement. Apparently, some subscribers got a few e-mails during the day, including one sent after 5 p.m. informing them that on-demand movies would be free (would've been nice to know that earlier in the day, huh?). At 8:30 p.m., when the 82nd Academy Awards started on ABC and there was still no signal, my wife and I shut off the TV and turned to the Internet to satisfy our Hollywood jones. Actually, we scored big time, thanks to Sky TV HD out of England, which offered a live feed of the awards (with only the "voice of God" announcements at the Kodak Theater inaudible). During the commercial breaks, sponsor Moët and a handful of Euro-centric advertisers (Alfa Romeo, Citroën and some British car service called 118 that appropriated the Ghostbusters theme song) filled the first minute, and the rest was filled by commentary provided by a Sky hostess and three 30-something guests. They were actually pretty insightful and a tad snarky. For example, they interpreted Mo'nique's odd speech as code for some behind-the-scenes wrangling for her nomination (if she was going to thank very few people, they observed, why would one of them be her lawyer?). Sadly, just after the best actor award was handed out, we lost the free feed. Since Cablevision never let us know that WABC was back on, we trawled around online for another simulcast, finding a Spanish-language backhaul of TNT's Latin American feed, which was irritating because the last three speeches were dubbed by live translation. But perhaps the final straw was the sponsor at the bottom of the screen as we watched: Cablevision's Optimum Triple Play. You wasted your money on that one, Jimmy Dolan: The only people watching TNT's feed were pissed-off Cablevision subscribers like us!

—Posted by Michael Bürgi