The House of the Mouse’ two biggest media properties, ABC along with their cohorts at ESPN, have signed a deal with Cox cable to serve up football games and other ‘hit shows’ but at a price – they will eliminate a consumer’s ability to skip over commercials.

Metroxing‘s post yesterday about corporate arrogance apparently continues into the media/cable realm.

The deal calls for this to happen only for offerings via Cox’s On Demand service.  The article about this over at the venerable WSJ mentions that at least Tivo owners can still bypass the ads.

What the heck were these guys thinking?!  Does Cox have a secret stash of Tivo stock?  Because if I was a Cox subscriber (I am not thank goodness), I would rant at them first and then quickly subscribe to Tivo second.  It would be worth the extra bucks per month to protect my ability to choose what to do with the content I am paying to see (ie cable) not what some bloated, arrogant, media co’s can talk a cable provider into screwing their loyal customer base out of.

You can bet other cable/telco’s are looking at this deal very carefully and it ain’t good news for you and me folks.