If you’re a Dish customer and have been tuning-in to CBS-owned channels over Thanksgiving weekend, you may not have even been aware the channels were in on the verge of being pulled early last week. The distribution agreement between the two companies, which includes 14 CBS-owned stations and channels such as Showtime and CBS Sports Network, was extended temporarily on November 25th.
This is the second extension in two weeks to keep the channels on air, after the first five-day extension was initiated on November 20th. Dish and CBS say they will resume negotiations next week.
Dish customers were also given back access to Turner-owned channels such as Adult Swim, Cartoon Network, and CNN, as those channels were restored after about a month of blackout. In an extended agreement, those channels and five others were restored, along with an extension of Turner’s flagship TBS and TNT channels.
In other news, Verizon FiOS TV customers were not so lucky over the holiday as the Cox-owned local Fox affiliate channels in the Boston and Providence areas were yanked from the FiOS lineup, leaving customers without local access to the Chicago Bears vs. Detroit Lions on Thanksgiving, as well as other programming on Fox WFXT and WFXT Movies.
With contributors from HD Report.
