Fox News, Charter carriage lawsuit comes to an end
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Michelle Clancy
| 09 July 2017

Just under a year since it began, Charter and Fox News Channel have just resolved a carriage fee-related lawsuit.

Court documents filed in New York obtained by*The Hollywood Reporter*showed that the issue has been “discontinued with prejudice”—which indicates a settlement in most cases. Neither Charter nor Fox have commented on the situation.

The suit alleged that the MSO was attempting to use its just-closed $71.4 billion acquisition of Time Warner Cable as an excuse to avoid negotiating a new carriage deal. Charter’s deal with FNC at the time was expiring (it expired in April), and the suit alleged that TWC, as the new owner of Charter, was trying to grandfather FNC in under its own deal with the news network, using the merger as a pretext to unilaterally impose licence fees that are dramatically below current market rates.

Fox ran ads warning that Charter subscribers could lose access to the Fox Broadcast Network, FX, National Geographic and the Fox regional sports networks, though a series of extensions has kept the networks on the air.

Univision filed a similar suit last year. "Distribution of the Univision services shall be pursuant to the terms of the TWC agreement,” Charter told the network, according to the complaint.

Publicly, Charter said: "We have a long-term contract with Univision, and we expect them to honour it."

Univision alleged that TWC is not even managing the Charter cable system. "Everyone knows that is simply not true: the longstanding CEO and the senior executive team of Charter, as well as the former board of directors, now in fact manage and control all such cable systems, and virtually the entire TWC leadership team has departed," the suit said.

Univision went dark on Charter when its existing deal with TWC expired at the end of 2016, but the two decided to restore service and push pause on the dispute until a judge rules on motions for summary judgment in the ongoing lawsuit. That was expected in June but so far no ruling has surfaced in the case