Dish Network sues NBC, alleging breach of contract

Satellite giant Dish Network is suing NBC for breach of contract, escalating the dispute between the two companies over a new carriage deal.

A day after NBC alerted Dish customers that its stalled negotiations with the satellite company could result in a blackout of its programming this weekend, Dish struck back.

On Tuesday, Dish f iled a lawsuit in U. S. District Court in Chicago, alleging that NBC ignored its contractual obligation by launching a publicity campaign against the company.

“NBC’s public statements against DISH over the past 24 hours are in violation of the contract between the two companies,” Dish said in a statement.

Dish said NBC-Universal was violating an agreement it made f ive years ago with the federal government that it would not use its clout to black out any of its stations if a pay- TV provider chooses to exercise its right for binding arbitration. Dish said it expects to f ile for arbitration, which would prevent NBC from blacking out Dish customers.

“In the event of arbitration, affected programming would remain available during that process, and for the foreseeable future,” the Dish statement concluded.

NBC said in a statement: “Should Dish proceed with arbitration we will of course participate in the process, and look forward to receiving the fair market value for our portfolio of networks.”

NBC launched a broadbased messaging campaign across TV, radio and the Internet to alert the public about a potential outage of NBC- owned TV stations and some NBC-Universal cable channels on Dish. The dispute centers on the fees NBC is seeking for its broadcast and cable channels.

The blackout would mean that customers of Dish in the metropolitan Los Angeles region would no longer receive the two NBC-owned stations — KNBC- TV Channel 4 and Spanish- language network Telemundo — as part of their Dish programming packages as early as Sunday.

Los Angeles is Dish’s largest market with nearly 500,000 subscribers. But the blackout would also affect millions of Dish customers around the country.

Without an agreement in place, Dish wouldn’t be authorized to retransmit signals of 26 television stations owned by NBC — 10 NBC stations and 16 Telemundo stations — in such markets as New York City, Dallas, Chicago and Miami. The blackout would also affect NBC-Universal’s cable channels: USA Network, Bravo, Syfy, MSNBC and CNBC.