Fox News Sues Charter Communications Over Carriage Rate
July 19 2016 - 2:04PM
Dow Jones News
By Joe Flint
Fox News on Tuesday sued Charter Communications Inc., the
nation's second-largest cable operator, for breach of contract and
fraud.
The suit, filed in New York, comes in the wake of Charter's
recent $60 billion acquisition of Time Warner Cable. Fox News, a
unit of 21st Century Fox, claims Charter is illegally seeking to
apply Time Warner Cable's channel-carriage rates to carry Fox News
and its sister channel Fox Business Network in all its homes.
Time Warner Cable has paid lower rates to carry Fox News than
what Charter has been paying.
A spokesman for Charter couldn't immediately be reached for
comment.
Fox News is the second major programmer to accuse Charter of
breaching contracts. Earlier this month, Spanish-language
broadcaster Univision Communications Inc. filed a similar suit
against Charter. Univision owns multiple cable networks as well as
59 local television stations.
According to Tuesday's suit, Charter isn't adhering to a 2014
agreement it signed with Fox News to distribute the two channels
and instead is applying rates from an old agreement the network had
with Time Warner Cable.
Fights between programmers and distributors over fees have been
on the rise for the past several years. Distributors have been
consolidating in large part to increase leverage in negotiations
with programmers. Content companies fear that they will be squeezed
by distributors, hurting profits and leaving less money to create
programming.
Fox News parent 21st Century Fox and Wall Street Journal owner
News Corp. were part of the same company until mid-2013.
Write to Joe Flint at joe.flint@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
July 19, 2016 13:49 ET (17:49 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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