Saturday
evening many Subscribers to Dish Networks had were disappointed when
Fox News and their affiliated channels went dark. The blackout, which
is still going, was a result of an impasse between the satellite TV
provider and Fox while negotiating a new contract. According to
spokespeople at Dish this breakdown is a direct result of Fox adding
channels to the negotiations to try and increase the fees the
satellite company has been paying for broadcasting rights.
"It's
like we're about to close on a house and the Realtor is trying to
make us buy a new car as well," Warren Schlichting, Dish's
senior vice president of programming, said in a statement "Fox
blacked out two of its news channels, using them as leverage to
triple rates on sports and entertainment channels that are not in
this contract."
Fox
news channel and the Fox business network have become the third
network in the past three months to have stations pulled from Dish TV
over negotiation breakdowns. The first was Turner broadcasting back
in October and then CBS broadcasting earlier this month. Those two
breakdowns in talks resulted in those networks pulling their channels
on a temporary basis, 1 month and 12 hours respectfully, until the
negotiations were resolved.
How
long the blackout with Fox will last is hard to say with each side
blaming the other for the impasse. According to Fox executive vice
president Tim Carry they are offering Dish the same type of package
deal that other carriers have agreed to purchase.
"How
can I continue a relationship with someone who feels that they can be
treated differently?," Carry said. He blamed Dish for not
evolving its business model: "There's at the end of the rope of
the pricing and marketing model they put in in 1993 and have not
changed."
Whichever
side is more to blame for the blackout is unknown. The one thing that
a certainty in this dispute is that it is the 14 million Dish
subscribers at the ones that suffer from the lose.
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