Less than a day before Game 5 of the American League Championship Series in Anaheim last month, a large number of Yankees fans in New York were in danger of not being able to watch their beloved pinstripes on local TV.

News Corp. was minutes away from pulling its Fox channels, Fox 5 and WWOR-MYT, from Cablevision’s systems over a retransmission-consent dispute, according to several sources.

Fox was threatening to pull its channels at midnight on October 22, about 20 hours before the key Game 5 was slated to begin on the network.

If it had done so, Cablevision’s 3 million subscribers in the greater New York market would not have been able to watch the game, creating a situation that would have enraged local Yankees fans and caused a major PR issue for the network, the cable operator, and even the team.

But the crisis was averted late that Wednesday night when the two signed a one-year extension to keep the Fox networks on Cablevision’s systems. Game 5 hit the air and drew a whopping 20.8 rating in the New York market, underscoring the power that televised sports play in these types of negotiations.

The dispute marks the underpinnings of one of the most important stories developing in sports media, but one that isn’t talked about or publicized like so many others.

The debate over retransmission rights—where broadcasters want cable operators to pay cash to carry their local stations—will be one of the most closely watched issues over the next year, as the two sides try to determine how high the monthly “retrans fee” should be.

It’s not a stretch to suggest that the long-term future of broadcast networks as pivotal players in televised sports is at stake. If broadcasters somehow don’t add dollars to their coffers, the likelihood of big payouts during the next round of major sports TV negotiations from 2011 to 2013, which include the NFL, MLB, and NHL, seems remote.

Retransmission consent battles are not new. In 2000, Time Warner Cable famously dropped ABC in New York during the broadcast sweeps period because of a retransmission-consent dispute.

But as the economy has wreaked havoc on the TV advertising market, these disputes have taken on a new urgency for broadcasters. They need new revenue streams. It’s pretty simple: Broadcasters don’t have the dual revenue streams of ESPN and rely mainly on advertising revenue, which is clearly not growing.

In the New York market alone, ad sales are down 35 percent year over year, and next year they are projected to be flat, according to one veteran New York television executive.

To counter that decline, which is affecting stations all over the country, Fox and CBS have said they plan to start charging cable operators to carry their stations. Some reports have News Corp. charging cable operators 50 cents per subscriber per month for its locally owned and operated Fox stations, and 25 cents for its MyNetworkTV affiliates, local broadcast stations that Fox also owns.

For Cablevision, with its 3 million subscribers, that could result in a monthly payout of $2.25 million for Fox. By comparison, Cablevision pays ESPN around $12 million per month for its flagship channel alone. That’s what broadcasters are up against and why they feel the need to be paid cash for their stations.

“It’s not rocket science,” Chase Carey, News Corp.’s deputy chairman, said at an industry conference last month. “It doesn’t make sense that broadcast is only ad supported. It competes against other channels that are dual-revenue businesses, while a network like Fox sits there with truly the best programming in sports and entertainment.”

The battles are only just beginning. While the Cablevision fight was averted, another major dispute is brewing with New York’s other main cable operator, Time Warner Cable, whose contracts to carry all Fox channels—cable and broadcast—expire at the end of the year.

In late December 2008, Time Warner Cable signed a one-year extension for several of Fox’s cable channels, including FX, and regional sports networks Prime Ticket, Fox Sports West, Southwest, South, and Florida. Those deals, along with all of Fox’s other broadcast and cable channels, expire at the end of next month.

Could these signals actually be pulled from Time Warner Cable, which is in more than 13 million U.S. homes? Well, given the history of cable-industry negotiations, most of the cable executives contacted by SportsBusiness Journal expect News Corp.’s Time Warner Cable negotiation to really heat up as the New Year’s Eve deadline approaches.

And those same executives expect News Corp. to base much of its leverage on Fox’s slate of NFL playoff games, not to mention Fox’s highly rated American Idol and 24 series, both of which return in January. Imagine the scene in Gotham if, for example, Time Warner Cable isn’t able to show a Giants playoff game on Fox.