Turner Network and Dish were able to reach a compromise Friday when both made announcements that Turner channels will be temporarily restored. So viewers can now access Cartoon Network, CNN, Adult Swim, HLN, TCM, truTv and other channels removed in October when both could not reach an agreement.
LA Times reported that Turner's TNT and TBS cable channels, said to be the most popular, will have carriage extensions as agreed upon by the companies.
Although they were able to meet halfway already, the agreement is applicable for a short period only; it could be for several months while the companies are still going through negotiation procedures. Both declined to issue further statements.
Chairman Charlie Ergen of Dish confided to an analyst of Wall Street about his doubts if CNN is still a must-have network. To which Chief Executive John Martin of Turner Broadcasting reacted and considered Ergen's statement, "very antagonistic and aggressive" in a conference call to tackle the earnings of Time Warner.
With a huge number of subscribers, approximately 14 Million, Dish is undoubtedly one of the giants among pay-TV service providers.
Dish is now struggling with Comcast's NBC Universal and CBS. Dish and CBS decided to agree on short term extension to avoid a blackout of TV shows, "The Big Bang Theory," and NFL football games, Reuters reported.
Another cause of dispute could be the individual subscriber distributors' price to carry channels. There was a reported increase for NBC's sports channels which do not earn the interest of Dish customers.
It could be expected that the contract will include all Turner's networks. However, TBS and TNT will be negotiated under separate agreement because the two broadcasts sporting events.
