It took a blackout and a 12-hour one at that to bring CBS back to Dish Network’s lineup. Just shortly after 7 p.m. ET on Friday, CBS pulled its signal from Dish after three temporary extensions. One of the main sticking points was Dish’s AutoHop feature which allowed viewers to skip over a network’s ads. CBS had sued Dish over the concept and had threatened to pull all of its properties unless AutoHop was disabled on CBS’ channels.
The two sides agreed that AutoHop would be removed from CBS and its channels. In return, all of CBS’ 14 local channels in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco and other markets have returned preventing a blackout of today’s SEC Championship and Sunday’s NFL action.
The agreement covers CBS Sports Network, Showtime, Smithsonian Channel and TV Guide Network. Dish subscribers will also have access to the Showtime Anytime app and Dish can distribute the Showtime networks on an over-the-top service.
This ends a contentious six-month battle between CBS and Dish that again left subscribers in the middle. And this is CBS’ second fight in 15 months with a provider over distribution. CBS was blacked out on Time Warner Cable services for a month in late-summer 2013 and now for just 12 hours on Dish.
In both cases, subscribers did not lose any NFL regular season games, but it was close for both Dish and Time Warner. This leaves CBS in yet another position of strength winning two distribution battles over two major providers. Will a third provider decide to stand up to CBS or cave like Dish and Time Warner? We await the next battle which will most likely take place in 2015.
[Deadline]
Comments are closed.