TECH: Disney Network returns to Dish after ‘handshake deal’

Dis­ney’s net­works, includ­ing ABC, ESPN, FX and Dis­ney Chan­nel, have returned to Dish and Sling TV in a ten­ta­tive agree­ment between the two, Dead­line reports.

On Fri­day, Octo­ber 1, a total of 17 Dis­ney Chan­nel chan­nels were removed from ser­vice due to trans­porta­tion discrepancies.

“We have reached a hand­shake agree­ment with Dish/Sling TV that appro­pri­ate­ly reflects the fair mar­ket val­ue and terms of The Walt Dis­ney Com­pa­ny’s con­tent,” a Dis­ney spokesper­son said in a statement.

“As a result, we have been able to tem­porar­i­ly restore our net­work port­fo­lio while both par­ties work towards sign­ing a new contract.”

Dish accused Dis­ney of “hold­ing view­ers hostage to gain bar­gain­ing pow­er by claim­ing they want­ed to include ESPN and ESPN2 in their non-sports package.”

At the same time, Dis­ney says Dish did­n’t make a fair offer to leave ESPN and Nation­al Geo­graph­ic on Dish/Sling TV.

“After months of good faith nego­ti­a­tions, Dish has refused to enter into a fair and mar­ket-based agree­ment to con­tin­ue dis­tri­b­u­tion of our net­work,” the com­pa­ny said in a state­ment to Vari­ety mag­a­zine on Friday. 

Last year, the Dis­ney Chan­nel dis­ap­peared from YouTube TV in Decem­ber due to a sim­i­lar issue, only to return after just one day.

HBO and Cin­e­max, mean­while, took a dark turn in 2018 with Dish and only resur­faced last year (along with HBO Max).

In the sec­ond quar­ter of 2022, Dish and Sling TV had about 10 mil­lion com­bined U.S. sub­scribers, accord­ing to Statista.