After months of efforts to agree on a new contract, the network went dark on the satellite provider on Friday evening.
Michael Ansell/WBEI / CBS
CBS channels on Dish Network have gone black. CBS has ended its contract with the satellite provider, effective immediately, a rep for the network confirmed to BuzzFeed News. This will not affect access to CBS's new subscription service, CBS All Access. The network had threatened to go dark on the provider on Dec. 4 at 7 p.m. ET if a new contract could not be agreed upon. The two sides worked past the deadline last night to find an agreement, but couldn't come to one.
"Dish has dragged its feet at our many attempts to negotiate in good faith. Behavior like this is why Dish has a long history of depriving customers of the programing they have paid for. In the past year alone, Dish has dropped more than 121 local stations as well as several cable networks including CNN, Cartoon Network and Comcast SportsNet New England, among others. Meanwhile, CBS has only been off the air one other time in its history," CBS said in a statement. "What CBS seeks is appropriate compensation for the most-watched television network with the most popular content in the world, as well as terms that reflect the developing digital marketplace. We hope that we can reach an agreement very soon so we can all get back to the business of providing the best entertainment, news and sports to the Dish customers we both serve."
The network and Dish have been in talks over the last six months to create a new contract. In recent weeks, CBS granted two extensions to Dish in an effort to prevent subscribers from losing CBS, Showtime, and CBS Sports Network. But on Monday, Dec. 1, CBS said it would not provide any more extensions if the two could not figure out a new agreement by Dec. 4. CBS also created a website called www.keepcbs.com to encourage subscribers to contact the provider.
Dish will lose CBS channels in 16 major cities across the country, which includes the critically acclaimed drama The Good Wife and television's most watched shows, The Big Bang Theory and NCIS. While many shows are currently taking a December hiatus right now, the blackout will also cause subscribers to lose all sporting events. Additionally, Showtime's Homeland, The Affair, and Web Therapy are currently airing new episodes.
CBS and Time Warner Cable had a similar dispute in the summer of 2013, resulting in a blackout that lasted a month. The aftereffects were not good for Time Warner, which lost 306,000 TV subscribers in three months, in part due to the blackout. In the end, CBS won increased fees.
Showtime / Via giphy.com
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