Univision, Mediacom Strike Carriage Deal

Mediacom Communications has reached a multi-year carriage agreement with Univision Communications, including retransmission consent for the Spanish language broadcaster’s TV stations and its cable networks UniMás, Galavision and well-known movie director Robert Rodriguez’ El Rey Network.

“During their 20-year legacy, Mediacom has always valued diverse voices in media and respected Univision’s role in providing that voice to our communities,” said Univision chief commercial officer and president of content distribution Tonia O’Connor in a statement. “We are proud to once again expand our partnership with Mediacom to achieve our mutual goal of giving Hispanic America the programming they love. We are also thrilled that Mediacom is launching El Rey Network, which unites culturally diverse generations through powerhouse programming.”

The agreement comes on the heels of Mediacom’s announcement that it will spend $1 billion over the next three years to upgrade its broadband network to speeds of up to 1 Gigabit per second.

This is the second carriage deal Univision has reached in about one week. On March 14 it announced a multi-year deal with Atlantic Broadband.  The content provider is still in negotiations with AT&T’s U-Verse over an expired carriage agreement, although the broadcaster has granted several extensions to keep it programming available to the distributor while it continues talks.  

“Mediacom strives to offer culturally rich and diverse programming to our customers,” said Mediacom executive vice president of programming and human resources Italia Commisso Weinand, in a statement. “We are pleased to announce the continuation of our long-standing partnership with Univision.”