(REUTERS) — Dish Network Corp and Time Warner reached a new agreement on Wednesday that will allow Dish subscribers continued access to Turner Broadcasting and HBO programming.
The new contract caps months-long tension between the two companies. For a brief period late last year some of Turner Broadcasting’s networks, including CNN and the Cartoon Network, were pulled from Dish (DISH), affecting 14 million subscribers.
Those networks were restored with a deadline extension for hashing out an agreement that included Turner’s TBS and TNT networks. The new contract, the details of which were not disclosed, was announced by Turner and Time Warner (TWX) on Wednesday.
“We’re pleased that the Dish customers we all serve can continue to enjoy Turner and HBO’s popular programming on multiple platforms,” Turner Broadcasting said in the statement.
Additionally, Dish’s video streaming service, Sling TV, said it will carry HBO Now – the new Internet-only product – for an additional $15 in time for the premier of the hit series “Game of Thrones” on April 12.
Sling TV’s core package, which includes content from Turner Broadcasting and ESPN, costs $20 per month. Sling TV is one from a handful of new subscription streaming TV services aimed at cord-cutters. Last month, Sony (SNE) launched its own pay-TV service, Playstation Vue, while a number of individual channels and networks have followed HBO’s lead to create their own subscription services. There have also been reports that Apple (AAPL) could launch its own online pay-TV service later this year and Verizon (VZ) is also rumored to be considering a move into the market.
Carriage agreements – industry lingo for contracts between distributors and media companies – have been at the center of several standoffs in recent years, often resulting in programming blackouts. The battles usually are over the price that a distributor pays the media company per subscriber on a monthly basis and on digital rights for video streaming products.
