EchoStar Negotiations with Sinclair Extended

The ongoing signal carriage negations between Echostar and Sinclair Broadcast were about to come to an end on May 31, when the Dish Network would stop carrying Sinclair's stations. However, with the deadline looming, negotiations were extended for two more months as contract discussions continue. There is no assuranc

Author:: TVTechnology
Publish date:: May 26, 2005

The ongoing signal carriage negations between Echostar and Sinclair Broadcast were about to come to an end on May 31, when the Dish Network would stop carrying Sinclair's stations. However, with the deadline looming, negotiations were extended for two more months as contract discussions continue.

There is no assurance that further negotiations will be successful, according to the Sinclair Web site.

For fans of Fox's "American Idol," the winner will be decided before the plug is pulled.

Meanwhile, Dish's direct competitor, DirecTV, just finished negotiations for an extension of its retransmission consent agreement with Sinclair.

Sinclair Broadcast Group and Cox Communications agreed to a four-year extension to their retransmission consent agreement earlier this week.

33 Sinclair stations are in limbo.

EchoStar’s Dish Network, the No. 2 U.S. satellite-television service, stopped carrying Viacom-owned channels last Tuesday.

Lifetime and the Lifetime Movie Network are no longer available via Echostar's Dish Network satellite distribution service. Lifetime's contract expired Dec. 31 and was not renewed. According to Echostar, Lifetime demanded a 76 percent increase over existing rates to allow continued retransmission of programming. T

Affiliate negotiations continue

Broadcasters' eight year-long campaign to force EchoStar to stop providing distant broadcast network signals to its customers could be over this week as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Court found in favor of the networks. The decision could force EchoStar's Dish network to drop distant network signals from A

Sinclair is demanding payment for cable retransmission of its broadcast programming.

Satellite TV provider EchoStar brought in $1.86 billion in revenue during its third fiscal quarter, ending Sept. 30. This 28 percent increase is attributed in part to the addition of 350,000 Dish Network net subscribers, boosting its total to approximately 10.5 billion, according to EchoStar. Net income for the Engle