2.7 million AT&T U-Verse customers are now without their Alton Brown or Iron Chef after the cable company was unable to come to an agreement with Scripps Networks about fees and other issues regarding their channels like the Food Network, HGTV, DIY Network, Cooking Channel and Great American Country.

In a statement, the president of Scripps said that the two companies had agreed in principle on carriage fees well ahead of the deadline. He claims that the impasse in the negotiations involves AT&T U-verse’s demands for rights to use video from the Scripps channels for non-TV platforms.

Sez the Scripps prez:

AT&T U-verse demanded unreasonably broad video rights for emerging media where business models have not even been established… Accepting their demands would have restrained our ability to deliver our content to our viewers in new and innovative ways.

For its part, AT&T U-Verse is standing by its previous statement that “we’ve been working for weeks to reach a fair deal, but they didn’t hold up to what had been agreed upon verbally, leaving us without the rights to offer these channels. We apologize to our customers who’ve been affected by this. We want to keep these channels on, at a fair price for you.”

AT&T U-verse drops HGTV, Food Network other family-friendly networks from its channel lineup [MarketWatch]

Food Network president blasts AT&T U-verse for turning off channels [Chicago Tribune]

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