Deadline Approaches on Rainbow/AT&T Contract

DALLAS/NEW YORK: As the deadline nears for the expiration of Rainbow Media’s carriage contract with AT&T U-verse for AMC, IFC and WE tv, the two companies have still been unable to come to an agreement on the terms of a renewal.

The clock runs out tonight at midnight, following a two-week extension of the original contract, which expired July 1. AT&T says it is "making every effort to reach a fair agreement and continue providing these channels to our customers. It’s unfortunate that Rainbow Media, owned by Cablevision, is clearly not negotiating in good faith, is trying to charge significantly more than the average of what our TV competitors pay for these channels, and is acting in a way that harms competition and limits consumer choice." The IPTV platform says it has made "numerous proposals to reach a fair resolution," all of which have been rejected by Rainbow Media, which AT&T says is "making unreasonable proposals that give it an unfair competitive advantage. We don’t want customers to lose their programming. We’re fighting for a fair deal because our customers deserve the programming they want, at a fair price. We want to reach an agreement that is fair to our subscribers and for all parties."

Rainbow Media responded with its own statement earlier today. "Our executives have been at AT&T U-verse offices for several weeks, doing everything possible to reach an agreement." The statement continues, "We have been good partners and have been supportive of AT&T since they launched their U-verse service. We are proud of the programming that we produce at our networks, which has created great value for AT&T. We have agreements with every other television provider in the country and have never had our networks dropped in more than 25 years."

The spat comes ahead of the July 25 premiere of the new season of AMC’s critically acclaimed Mad Men.