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Turner to Dish Network: We Don’t Know What You’re Talking About

Nov 5, 2014  •  Post A Comment

Turner Broadcasting issued a statement today in response to comments Tuesday from Dish Network, with the two companies involved in a difficult contract dispute.

As we reported earlier today, Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen said Tuesday that the company may pull Turner’s TNT and TBS off its programming lineup, after dropping other Turner channels last month.

Here’s the statement from Turner:

Turner Broadcasting Responds to Dish Comments

We are disappointed in the aggressive nature of the comments from Dish Network, particularly given the fact that Dish agreed to our rates and carriage proposals weeks ago. We were supportive of the Dish OTT effort and had found common ground on the major issues there. While there were clearly deal points to get done, they were not the type you would usually go dark over. So it is still unclear to us exactly what this dispute is about. We’ve been told our networks were taken down because we would not move an expiration date later in the year.

Other top 5 distributors have signed up for what Dish has walked away from. The value of the Turner news, entertainment, kids and young adult brands and content are reflected in the leadership positions they hold across the media landscape. That includes 5 of the top 30 cable networks. So we honestly have no idea what Dish was talking about yesterday.

We’ve had a long-term relationship with Dish that has been good for both of us. That’s one of the reasons we agreed to multiple extensions during this negotiation process and have worked diligently to address their issues. We stayed at the table even after Dish removed our networks from their service and we’re hopeful we can get a deal done in the near future.

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