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Oprah Winfrey’s OWN and Cablevision reach deal

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Fear not, those rich folks with houses in the Hamptons will not be denied OWN, the new cable network from Oprah Winfrey and Discovery Communications.

With the channel’s New Year’s Day launch creeping up, OWN has reached a deal with Cablevision Systems Inc. to carry the service. Not only does Cablevision serve the elite, it also provides cable to the regular folks in Long Island, Brooklyn and the Bronx, who will be able to watch Winfrey’s network, be empowered by its programming and set their sights on getting their own mansion on the beach.

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All sarcasm aside, landing Cablevision, which serves over 3 million subscribers in the New York City area, fills a big hole for OWN. The channel will debut in about 85 million homes, but if it wasn’t on in Cablevision homes, it would be missing a big chunk of the nation’s top television market.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, however a person familiar with the pact said Cablevision will initially carry the channel for free and then pay a fee that could end up being more than 20 cents per-subscriber, per-month.

-- Joe Flint

For the record: This post was updated to note that Cablevision does not have systems in Queens and to fix a spelling error.

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