AT&T Blacks Out HBO, Cinemax For Dish, Sling TV Users Over Carriage Dispute (telecompaper.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Telecompaper: AT&T has blocked its HBO and Cinemax channels for Dish and Sling TV customers over a carriage dispute. This is the first channel blackout for HBO in its 40 years of operation. Pay-TV provider Dish and OTT services Sling TV said AT&T is making "untenable demands designed specifically to harm customers, particularly those in rural areas, as well as damage competing pay-TV providers" and that at the time of the merger, no guidelines were set in place to ensure AT&T "played fair" for HBO and Cinemax subscribers, regardless of their pay-TV provider.

Dish said AT&T is demanding it pay for a guaranteed number of subscribers, regardless of how many people actually want to subscribe to HBO. The company noted that during the arbitration process, AT&T will have to restore its channels to Dish customers. The company and Sling TV will credit customers on their bill for the time they do not receive either HBO or Cinemax. Dish added that it is also offering customers a free preview of HDNET Movies. An HBO spokesperson said in a statement: "During our forty-plus years of operation, HBO has always been able to reach agreement with our valued distributors and our services have never been taken down or made unavailable to subscribers due to an inability to conclude a deal. Unfortunately, Dish is making it extremely difficult, responding to our good faith attempts with unreasonable terms. Past behavior shows that removing services from their customers is becoming all too common a negotiating tactic for them. We hope the situation with Dish changes soon but, in the meantime, our valued customers should take advantage of the other ways to access an HBO subscription so they can continue to enjoy our acclaimed programming."

Comments

This reminds me of Georgia

[Anonymous Coward]

See, there was a gubernatorial debate scheduled. But Kemp wanted to cancel, and did, while blaming the other side for not rescheduling.

So...

Re: This reminds me of Georgia

[Anonymous Coward]

If a conservative reads this, he'll forward it so his friends can have a good laugh.
A liberal will delete it because he's "offended".

-Tom Araya

Actually, based on past experience conservatives will mindlessly bombard people with this rhetorical meme even as they assault NFL players for protesting during the National Anthem, seek to deny same-sex couples the right to marry, concoct phony reasons to deny people the right to vote, seek to impose burdensome regulations on provision of birth control, and believe their own scare-mongering about immigrants even while excusing tyrannical terrorist regimes that murder people by the thousands.

They did it for the Clinton deathlist, they believed Jesus and Santa were White like in a Norman Rockwell painting, vandalized innocent restaurants and have actually demonized media outlets as enemies of the state.

Yeah, enjoy that reality.

Re:Netflix/Android Prime

[Joe_Dragon]

NO GOT
NO westworld
NO Berry
NO curb your enthusiasm
and on

Re:Just stream it.

[aaronb1138]

Exactly why AT&T shouldn't be able to control both content and distribution as a matter of anti-trust (same for Comcast et. al.). At one time they had a very cozy relationship including combined billing with Dish, as Dish although a distribution channel, was effectively content for consumers.

AT&T is playing hardball because they would rather take $15 direct while making extra cash on the backend providing consumer bandwidth necessary for the service. No reason to let Dish charge $15 or $20 and only give them $10. Plus getting people off Dish only serves to get more people on AT&T U-verse / DSL as well as convincing customers to kick their bandwidth package up a notch to handle multiple people streaming instead of getting HBO or Cinemax over satellite.

Equally so, we can be assured that 4k and 8k content streaming are going to be pushed by AT&T and Comcast through their content networks as a way to make consumers pay for bigger bandwidth and usage packages. Zero rate native content against caps, but choke the bandwidth until they get better than base internet speed.