Last Friday media giant Time Warner (News - Alert) Cable pulled the plug on MSG’s FUSE music channel adding to the ongoing negotiation battle.

The two companies have had ongoing negotiations for the past two years; however, if no resolution is found before Dec. 31, MSG will be dropped from Time Warner. Currently MSG, and MSG+, its sports network, is host to the NBA New York Knicks and the NHL’s New York Rangers and Islanders, New Jersey Devils and Buffalo Sabres.

“We will not remove MSG/MSG+ from our New York cable systems. That ball is in MSG’s court,” said Mike Angus, senior vice president, content acquisition for Time Warner Cable. “Time Warner Cable and our customers have stood by MSG and its teams through thick and thin. Our customers have paid whether the teams won or lost; they deserve better.”

At this point it seems the only ones losing out are the customers and sports fans of the New York and Buffalo market. On Saturday night MSG ran a crawl during the Sabres game issuing a warning to viewers that Time Warner Cable may be dropping the network on Dec. 31. MSG then displayed the logos of RCN (News - Alert), DirecTV and Verizon FiOS as potential alternate providers, according to Multichannel.

“The decision to take MSG away from our customers after Dec. 31 is MSG’s and MSG’s alone,” said Joli Plucknette-Farmen, local Time Warner spokesperson in a recent statement. “MSG wants a 53 percent increase in the price we currently pay. We buy sports all over the country and that is way out of line.”

MSG, however, is dismayed at what they see as unfound allegations by Time Warner. According to MSG they have tried to negotiate and just want Time Warner to pay what is due to them. MSG made a statement Sunday night say, “Time Warner Cable is blatantly mischaracterizing our negotiations and the figures as a smokescreen for the fact that they are not willing to pay fair and reasonable rates for our programming.”

As reported earlier by YNN, Time Warner Cable says while it was close to a deal with MSG on a 6.5 percent increase, the deal fell apart over MSG’s demand that its FUSE music network also be carried.

However, Angus from Time Warner fired back stating, “FUSE is watched by fewer than one-tenth of one percent of the customers who have it available – that’s just 4,000 customers out of more than 7.4 million. Asking our customers to pay millions for a channel they clearly don’t want and don’t value is nothing more than a tax on New York sports fans.”

Angus went onto say, “We’re hopeful that MSG will put fans first and do the right thing for their viewers and our customers,” adding, “We’re willing to pay a reasonable increase and we’re willing to keep the channels on while we negotiate. We are hopeful that we’ll be able to reach agreement without putting New York sports fans in the middle of the dispute. We think these customers deserve better.”

According to NBC news channel, WGRZ, the last time Time Warner Cable and MSG went through contract negotiations was in 2005; resulting in disruption in service. This time, both sides say that don’t want the same incident repeated.