Charter’s Univision Blackout Ends With Court Ruling

Charter-Spectrum customers now have access to TV networks owned by Univision, after a judge granted the cable company’s request for a temporary restraining order against the media company, effectively ending the blackout that started Tuesday night.

Yesterday evening, Charter restored the networks about 36 hours after the new Time Warner Cable property had pulled them. An estimated 2.5 million homes in the U.S. were estimated to have been affected by the blackout.

“Today, the Supreme Court For The State of New York granted Charter a temporary restraining order, meaning that Univision programming will be returned to our customers,” Charter said in a statement.

The two had been fighting over the carriage rate that Charter was paying to Univision: Charter recently merged with TWC, but kept its former name, and thus, Univision said it should be paying a carriage rate negotiated for Charter, and not for the much larger TWC.

TWC’s size allowed it to negotiate better carriage deals with broadcasters, but Univision and others have alleged that Charter is illegally seeking to pay that lower rate.

Unable to reach a deal, Univision ordered Charter to pull its channels — including UniMas, Galavision, Univision Deportes, and its flagship namesake network — from all Charter customers’ cable listings nationwide.

Charter obliged this request, and these stations went dark overnight on Tuesday.

(via L.A. Times)

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