In keeping with the general spirit of the evening, E! and Style and
Dish Network agreed to a short- term extension of their contract
negotiations.
The Comcast-owned networks, in an announcement around
9:15 p.m. (ET) on Dec 31, said the parties had reached a short-term
extension of their discussions "in hopes of reaching a long-term
solution."
The parties faced an expiration of their contracts on Jan. 1 at midnight.
E! and Style ran crawls and promos on their air on Dec. 30, alerting Dish subscribers about the possibility that they could lose the Comcast-owned services.
Dish and Comcast remain at loggerheads over carriage of a number of regional sports networks, notably Comcast SportsNet California, which Dish dropped on Nov. 24 after it lost a Federal Communications Commission arbitration hearing it initiated.
Elsewhere, Dec. 31 saw Time Warner Cable and Sinclair Broadcast Group agreed to an extension through Jan. 14 of their retransmission-consent negotiations, impacting 33 stations in the MSO's footprint.
For their part, Suddenlink and Viacom reached an agreement in principle on a long-term carriage pact, covering the programmer's portfolio of services, including movie service Epix
