At present, subscribers to Cablevision are denied access to the Tennis Channel ;  Dolan Inc. would prefer the Tennis Channel being offered as part of their Sports Pak. Much like the NFL Network in years past, the Tennis Channel would naturally, rather be available as part of a basic package.  A protest advertisement aimed at Cablevision customers ran in a number of newspapers this weekend, but not Cablevision-owned Newsday.  Tennis Channel chief exec Ken Solomon tells the New York Times’ Richard Sandomir he’s surprised the ad was rejected, “The newspaper industry is not doing all that well, so it™s a surprise they turned down this amount of money.  No kidding, that might need that dough to sign Ramon Sessions.

œThanks for nothing Cablevision, says the ad, which shows a tennis racket smashing a cable box.

It adds: œYou™ve dropped the ball by preventing your subscribers from seeing Tennis Channel™s round-the-clock coverage of the U.S. Open. It invites Cablevision customers to switch to DirecTV, Dish TV or Verizon FiOS to get access to the coverage.

The channel said that the ad was accepted by all the newspapers it was offered to ” the New York Times, New York Post, Daily News, Westchester-Rockland Journal News and the Record of New Jersey.

Newsday™s decision not to carry the ad raises questions about the paper™s independence from Cablevision and whether it would have accepted the ad under its previous owner, the Tribune Company.

Bob Steele, an ethics expert at the Poynter Institute, said, œThere are times when a newspaper says no to an ad because they find it objectionable on taste grounds, or find it filled with hatred for a particular group of people. But this one doesn™t measure up in terms of protection because they™re protecting themselves.

Howard Schneider, a former Newsday editor who is dean of the journalism school at Stony Brook University, said, œIt™s not a felony to protect your economic self-interest unless it influences your news coverage.