Mediagazer: ABC pulls signal from Cablevision just hours before the Oscars (Venuri Siriwardane/New Jersey Online)

Disney Pulls ABC From Cablevision After Deal Fails — The Walt Disney Company pulled its ABC station from Cablevision at 12:01 a.m. Sunday after failing to reach an agreement with the cable provider on a new contract, potentially leaving about three million cable customers in New York …

Discussion: NYConvergence and The Huffington Post

Venuri Siriwardane / New Jersey Online:

ABC pulls signal from Cablevision just hours before the Oscars … Channel 7 went dark in parts of New Jersey this morning as Disney and Cablevision remained mired in a distribution stalemate. — The midnight blackout occurred just hours before ABC's telecast of the Academy Awards …

Discussion: Lost Remote, Reuters, Epicenter, Hollywood Reporter and Save ABC7

NY Daily News:

ABC goes black at midnight, frustrating Cablevision customers — ABC has gone dark. — Seconds after midnight, Channel 7 disappeared from the screens of Cablevision customers right in the middle of a repeat episode of “Lost.” — Moments later a white screen appeared with a defiant message from ABC …

Discussion: Gothamist and Chickaboomer

Staci D. Kramer / paidContent:

Updated: Disney Makes Good On Threat; Pulls WABC From Cablevision On Oscar Eve — Midnight update: Get ready for some impromptu Oscar parties at New York-area households with Verizon FiOS or satellite: Disney (NYSE: DIS) and Cablevision (NYSE: CVC) couldn't find a way over a two-year impasse …

Discussion: Media Decoder, Multichannel, make the logo bigger and TVbytheNumbers

Diane Mermigas / BNET:
And the Oscar Goes... Anywhere in Digital Media Consumers Want

Discussion: Speakeasy, Multichannel, The Live Feed | THR, Variety, Company Town and MediaPost

Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:

Andreessen's Advice To Old Media: “Burn The Boats” — Legend has it that when Cortes landed in Mexico in the 1500s, he ordered his men to burn the ships that had brought them there to remove the possibility of doing anything other than going forward into the unknown.

Discussion: The Wire, TomsTechBlog.com and TeleRead

Michael Calderone / The Politico:

Left gears up to fight media wars — From a glitzy new office in downtown Washington, the ideological war over the media is fully engaged. — Six years after its founding to counter what it said was “conservative misinformation,” Media Matters for America employs a staff of 70 …

Andy Plesser / Beet.TV:

Powerful, Niche Audiences Gather Around Live Web Programming to Build New Media Brands — While the audiences for viewing of live events might be relatively small, it can be an influential for the publishers seeking to build a brand, says Jim Louderback, CEO of Revision3 …

Jennifer Van Grove / Mashable!:

The iPad Poses a Threat to Kindle's Market Share [STATS] — Independent research boutique ChangeWave surveyed 3,171 consumers and found that consumer pre-launch interest in the iPad is high. — Data demonstrates that consumers are more interested in purchasing an iPad than they were the iPhone prior to launch.

Discussion: TUAW

Vanessa Thorpe / Guardian:

The big gender gap on the small screen: men outnumber women on TV two-to-one — Study finds that females who do appear on television are often in soaps or on news to discuss ‘softer’ topics — Although there are more females, by a head or two in every 100, than there are males in the British population …

Maria Elena / Show Tracker:

Conan Twitter Tracker: How Conan Met Sarah — Ok, Conan, you're not such a bad guy, after all. We admit that for a while Friday we thought @LovelyButton was a figment of your Twitter imagination (read: Freckles and the gang), but now that we've actually spoken to her and have seen firsthand …

Discussion: CNET News, New York Magazine and Mediaite

Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:

Cisco Wants To Kill Your Cisco Set-Top Box With Another Cisco Set-Top Box (CSCO, CMCSA, AAPL) — Cisco's plan to rule the Internet will be unveiled next week during a press event on March 9. What is it? — Most reports we've seen so far suggest it will have something …