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Cablevision has gotten a lot of press lately, not all good, not all bad. The company even did a dog and pony show for Wall Street investors earlier this month, trying to patch up some rough spots with major shareholders. One of the newest -- and largest -- shareholders, hedge fund Harbinger Capital Partners, didn`t show, and that kind of set the tone for the gathering.

CEO James Dolan, scion of the family that controls some 74 percent of the Long Island, N.Y. cable outfit`s voting stock, has some real problems on his hands. Citi yesterday downgraded Cablevisions stock from buy to sell, citing Verizon`s push into New York City with its FiOS network as a major potential source of market erosion. Share prices quickly fell 5 percent. Plus, Citi notes, Cablevision has a hefty $1.4 billion in debt due to be refinanced, and with the credit market still fighting to regain its footing, that could mean a substantial bump in interest payments.

On Friday Harbinger, Cablevision`s fourth-largest shareholder with nearly 8.1 percent of its Class A shares, let the company know it wants a meeting. Analysts say that despite the Dolan`s grip on the company, Harbinger has the ability to shake things up.

Mario Gabelli, whose company Gabelli & Co. also owns a sizable chunk of Cablevision, has been pushing for change. He wants the Dolans to sell assets, specifically the cable business, to TWC.

"Cablevision has always been off limits, since it`s controlled by the Dolans," Stanford Group analyst Fred Moran told Wired. "But since shareholders like Mario Gabelli are pushing for a split up of Cablevision`s assets -- timed concurrently with the spin off of Time Warner Cable from Time Warner -- you could see for the first time potential discussions of merging Time Warner Cable with Cablevision -- or [Time Warner Cable] buying selected parts of Cablevision`s systems."