Dish Network customers will continue to receive ESPN, ABC and other channels owned by the Walt Disney Co. — but neither the pay TV provider nor the media giant is saying for how long.
The two sides, staring at a Tuesday deadline for their programming agreement, reached a short-term extension on Monday night.
Details of the extension were not released, and the two sides continue their efforts to hammer out a long term deal.
The carriage-renewal battle comes just a month after 3 million customer of Time Warner Cable lost CBS programming for a month as those two companies fought over a new deal.
The Time Warner Cable-CBS spat centered on how much of digital syndication fees from other sources the Tiffany Network would control.
While Disney and Dish have yet to begin any public mudslinging, Dish boss Charlie Ergen has been vocal about his desire to break from the pack and offer sports-free TV packages.
Ergen has been in the cross hairs of the broadcast networks over Dish’s AutoHop function, which allows for extensive ad-skipping on its Hopper DVR.
The ongoing court case brought by Disney suggests Dish’s AutoHop function violates its retransmission consent agreement.