Dish Network (NASDAQ: DISH) announced that it has come to renewal terms with 21st Century Fox, ending a blackout of Fox News and Fox Business News that had been in place on the satellite carrier since Dec. 20.
Terms of the agreement were not disclosed, although unnamed sources told the Wall Street Journal that Dish is paying a "significant increase" over its last deal for Fox News. According to SNL Kagan, the channel commands an average per-subscriber licensing fee of about $1 per month. The Journal's sources say that fee just went up to $1.50 per sub for Dish.
The announcement came with a joint statement from Fox VP of Distribution Tim Carrey and Dish Senior VP of Programming Warren Schlichting: "We thank the viewers of Fox News and Fox Business and Dish customers for their patience throughout this process."
At one point in the kerfuffle, Carrey calculated that Dish had lost about 90,000 of its 14 million subscriber base due to the absence of Fox News.
More concrete, transparent data--calculations of Nielsen data--showed that Fox News' ratings had tumbled over 20 percent in the two weeks after the blackout.
For more:
- read this Dish Network press release
- read this Wall Street Journal story
Related links:
Fox News claims blackout has cost Dish 90K subs
Fox News' total audience down over 21% since Dish blackout started
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