NBCU And Dish Reach Carriage Deal

The recent news in the television industry is about the settling of the dispute between Dish Network and NBC Universal over ad-skipping tech. Fox, NBC, ABC, and CBS went to court in 2012 to stop ad-skipping that was introduced with the advanced DVR from Dish called AutoHop. These companies claimed that the AutoHop technology is against the copyright rules and that the technology breached their carriage terms with Dish Network. However, the satellite TV company responded that this technology is a user-friendly feature, which helps to automate skipping of advertisements that viewers already do with remote controls.

“NBC Universal and DISH Network have reached an agreement resulting in the dismissal of all pending litigation between the two companies, including disputes over the AutoHop and PrimeTime Anytime features,” said a spokesperson for Dish Network. As per this agreement, the users of Dish Network will be able to skip ads a week after the initial transmission of a TV show. As per sources, this deal also settles the re-transmission contract clash between Dish Network and NBCU.

The current carriage deal battle between NBCU and Dish involve NBC and Telemundo stations that are owned by the programmer in markets like Los Angeles, New York, Dallas, Chicago, and Miami. This also includes the pay TV services like Syfy, CNBC, USA, Bravo, and MSNBC.

Dish and NBC were locked in a fight and viewers feared that the NBC-owned stations would be pulled out from the Dish Network channels list. Dish said to FCC that they would take NBCU to arbitrations, but they never filed an arbitration demand. A breakthrough has been achieved now, but NBC has commented only on the AutoHop issue. Dish is now fighting with Tribune and NFL network over carriage issues and the Tribune channels are now not available in the Dish Network.