It seemed to take the threat of a witness stand to put the final nail into a case and cause Dish to settle with Cablevision. Cablevision clearly won as Dish will pay a settlement fee and relaunch all of the AMC Networks, including AMC, WE, and Sundance, as well as finally launch the Fuse Network. And as both sides begin to play nice again, the rancorous feelings between both companies and their respective leaders has most probably not subsided. Publicly, both sides are saying nice things, using the old expression, "it's just business, not personal". But it is hard to believe that is true.
For Dish, the win may be that the $2.4 billion suit was settled for $700 million and saving four months of not paying for these channels. For Cablevision, it was a recoup of some of the loss of Voom and to regain a healthy number of subscribers across its networks. And for now, one more fight between network and distributor has ended; no worries though, another should begin again as we get closer to the end of the year and another contract is set to expire.
