Dish is on the verge of losing two more channels if a new deal isn’t reached. In what’s becoming a far too frequent development for the provider, Dish customers are being notified of the possibility of FX and National Geographic being pulled from the service in the near future. The company is working on a deal with Disney to settle this before it gets to that point.
Disney, which acquired the two channels as part of the merger deal with Fox, has alerted Dish and its customers that if nothing is reached by Tuesday, the two networks will go dark.
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This comes after the two parties already extended the deadline in July as talks of a new deal seemed imminent. Nothing has been settled since, however. Deadline shared a statement from the company.
“Our contract with Dish for the FX and National Geographic networks is due to expire soon, so we have a responsibility to make our viewers aware of the potential loss of our programming. However, we remain fully committed to reaching a deal and are hopeful we can do so.”
Dish has certainly dealt with its fair share of battles over networks. The company has seen HBO go dark for 10 months now. There was also a long battle with Univision that remain inactive for months.
A current dispute going on between Dish and Fox Networks has gotten pretty nasty over the past few weeks, as well. The provider has threatened to remove the network’s sports-branded channels altogether.
Dish Network Chariman Charlie Ergen doesn’t feel the high cost of keeping the channels is worth the payout.
“The frustrating thing is, they are not very good economic deals for us,” Ergen said. “We have real data that tells us that the channels are overpriced, and Fox had a lot of leverage to get people to overpay when they owned them.”
This is a growing trend among networks and providers. There was a recent standoff between CBS and AT&T’s DirecTV. The dispute lasted three weeks and saw 26-CBS owned stations go dark in 17 major markets.
Afterwards, the two companies put out a statement saying that they “regret any inconvenience” the hiatus may have called and thanking their customers for their patience.
