Rest easy, Dish Network subscribers. CNN is coming back to your airwaves.
After a tense round of negotiations, Dish and Turner have reached an agreement to extend their relationship, restoring CNN and other networks to Dish.
The agreement brings Turner channels such as CNN, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, truTV, TCM, HLN, CNN en Espanol and Boomerang back to the Dish Network service.
The extension is for several months, an individual with knowledge of the situation told TheWrap on Friday.
The extension comes following a heated back-and-forth between the two companies. After cutting CNN, Cartoon Network and other Turner channels from Dish’s roster in October, Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen took aim at CNN in particular during an earnings call in November, saying, “it’s hard to have a double-digit price increase” for a channel that consumers are watching half as much as in years before.
“It’s Turner’s job to make their product better, not ours,” he added.
That prompted Turner Broadcasting CEO John Martin to criticize Ergen’s “very antagonistic and aggressive” comments.
“We disagreed with virtually everything [Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen] said as it related to the importance of our product, as it related to his platform,” Martin said.
“We were both disappointed in the very antagonistic and aggressive nature of his comments yesterday,” he added. “And we’re disappointed particularly given the fact that Dish had previously agreed to our networks’ rates and our carriage proposals weeks ago.”