Court TV has been taken off DISH Network’s channel lineup, effective 12:01 AM Monday, January 1, 2007. Both parties say they failed to come to terms on a new carriage agreement.
Turner said that EchoStar (the parent company of DISH Network) is “unwilling to pay…the standard industry rate”, but are willing to work with the company to return the channel to the roughly 12 million DISH subscribers capable of receiving the network.
EchoStar’s Eric Sahl, senior VP of programming for DISH responded, calling Turner’s asking price “unreasonable” adding “It is not fair to ask our customers to pay a DBS premium for a channel owned by the second largest cable operator, Time Warner.”
The Biography Channel will fill the gap left by Court TV while negotiations continue between the two sides.
Turner, in the meantime, began airing a television spot urging their viewers to call DISH Network and register their dissaproval with the loss of the channel. You can view the video of the commerical below.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_v-wZ8TnDk]
