According to the parties involved, there is no new movement on the carriage impasse fronts from NBCU and Dish or Univision and AT&T (U-verse).
An AT&T spokesperson said that they continue to try to reach a deal and all the networks and stations remain on U-verse in the interim.
On the NBCU/Dish front, Dish signaled March 18 it would seek mandatory outside arbitration per the Comcast/NBCU deal condition.
An NBCU source said they were still in a “cooling down”--10 business days is mandatory--for a final push for a deal before Dish can file for arbitration.
If no deal is done by then, Dish has another five days to file for arbitration.
Univision stations and networks went off U-verse March 4, but Univision and its stations were restored for a Democratic debate and remained on, with other Univision nets going back up last week, all with not deal yet done.
NBCU had signaled its stations might be off DISH as of March 20, but once Dish invoked arbitration, the programming had to remain on Dish during the cooling off period. Dish sued NBC over its ad campaign warning viewers of possible programming absences.
The NBCU stations --10 NBC and 16 Telemundo O&O's--are part of the not-yet-done deal, as are cable nets USA, Syfy, Bravo, CNBC, MSNBC and a couple of others.
