Univision's blackout on Charter's cable system is over for millions of Americans after a temporary restraining order returned regular programming, but a wrinkle left by the Time Warner merger remains.
A New York Supreme Court judge ended the blackout on Thursday that had temporarily pulled the plug on Univision channels carried by Charter-Spectrum’s cable service, said the Los Angeles Times.
“Today, the Supreme Court for the state of New York granted Charter a temporary restraining order, meaning that Univision programming will be returned to our customers,” according to a Charter spokesperson.
The Spanish-language media company had pulled its channels from Charter customers this week, citing a 2014 agreement with Charter which merged with Time Warner Cable (new Spectrum), said Forbes.
The blackout had pulled channels, including Univision, Unimás, Galavisión, Univision Deportes and El Rey networks, according to Forbes, and affected 2.5 million Hispanic customers across the country who have Charter cable in their homes.
According to Univision, Charter had failed to pay it carriage fees based on the terms of the past agreement.
In 2014, Univision and Charter came to an agreement which “contained a heavily-negotiated provision concerning corporate acquisitions” that would enable Charter to keep TWC’s rates the same until the end of 2016, but by 2017, it was understood that “the Charter Agreement would govern the acquired systems,” noted Media Moves.
The blackout came six months after Univision filed a lawsuit against Charter, accusing the cable provider of a “breach of contract over carriage fees,” said Forbes.
Univision claimed Charter had used “the [Time Warner Cable] Acquisition as a pretext to unilaterally impose license fees that are dramatically below current market license fees for Univision’s valuable content,” according to Media Moves.
Univision issued a statement about the agreement.
“Charter insists that the contract Univision had with Time Warner Cable is controlling, rather than its own contract with Univision,” said the statement. “Charter bases this argument on the preposterous theory that as a result of the merger, Time Warner Cable, rather than Charter, is managing all these cable systems. But everyone knows that is not true: the longstanding CEO and the executive team of Charter, as well as its pre-existing board of directors, now manage and control all of the cable systems.”
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