Last year, Disney’s battle with Charter Communications lasted until the first day Monday Night Football Game of the year. This one might take longer.

Over Sports Business JournalDirecTV CFO Ray Carpenter told reporters and analysts that the company will fight Disney “as long as it takes.”

Carpenter said it was no ordinary carriage fight.

“This is not a fight where we’re haggling over percentage points on a tax rate,” Carpenter said. “This is really about changing the model so that everyone has confidence that this industry can survive.”

The Disney-owned networks left DirecTV on Sunday, during the U.S. Open and shortly before kickoff of the LSU-USC game in Las Vegas.

At the heart of the dispute is DirecTV’s desire to unbundle Disney’s networks so customers don’t pay for content they don’t see.

“To Disney’s credit, they have not tried to hide their intentions,” Carpenter said. “Not only in their public statements, but also, frankly, in their performance. Disney has indicated publicly that they intend to exploit the wallets of our customers and other pay-TV customers to fund and support their DTC apps while shifting investment in the content and the quality of that content away from linear channels.”

Carpenter also made a snide remark about how sports fans didn’t want to watch cartoons – and that kids “didn’t want to pay for the rock skipping contest they had just recently been in, I think it was on ESPN2 or ESPN3.”

Actually, children would be the perfect target group for stone skipping. Assuming that today’s children skimp with stones. And that, in turn, assumes that they ever leave the house.