Univision Suing Charter Over Carriage Contract
Charter Communications is distributing Univision content under the terms of a Time Warner Cable contract that should end Dec. 31 but that Charter insists runs through June 2022, Univision said in a lawsuit filed Friday in New York State Supreme…
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Court in Manhattan. The suit asks for a declaratory judgment that its agreement with Charter expired June 30, its TWC agreement ends as of Dec. 31, and the license fees in Univision's TWC agreement apply only to the legacy TWC system and only through the end of this year. According to Univision, it tried to talk contract renewal terms with Charter before the May close of its TWC and Bright House Networks acquisitions but was rebuffed. The broadcaster alleged that after the TWC/BHN takeover, Charter said it was electing to distribute Univision programming across its combined Charter/TWC system under the terms of the TWC agreement until June 2022 and under the fee terms of that agreement. Univision said a multiple-system operator acquisition clause in its Charter contract should terminate its TWC agreement at the end of this year. Univision said Charter "rested [its] claims upon the blatant fiction that TWC -- and not the pre-Acquisition Charter team running New Charter -- now 'manages' all of those cable systems." In a statement Friday, Charter said it has a long-term contract with Univision "and we expect them to honor it.”