HBO not available on Dish Network

22h06 PDT the 31/10/2018

by

Abid Rahman

The premium cable channel stops broadcasting for the first time in its history.

HBO is in the dark on the Dish network amid a stalemate on distribution deals, the first time that it went out of the air on one of its major distributors in forty years of history.

On Wednesday night, HBO, Cinemax and its various other channels were banned from Dish's subscribers. HBO blamed the failure for an "inability to enter into an agreement" with Dish who had reacted to the company's "bona fide attempts with unreasonable terms".

Complete statement from HBO to The Hollywood journalist Wednesday night:

"In our more than 40 years of operation, HBO has always been able to reach an agreement with our valued distributors, and our services have never been removed or made inaccessible to subscribers because of their inability to make a deal. agreement. Unfortunately, DISH makes the task extremely difficult, responding to our attempts in good faith with unreasonable terms. Past behaviors show that the removal of their clients' services has become a much too common trading tactic for them. We hope that the situation with DISH will change soon but, in the meantime, our valued customers should take advantage of other ways to access an HBO subscription to continue enjoying our acclaimed programming.

Dish has a history of contentious distribution negotiations that have led networks and stations to darken before a new deal is reached. During the last Thanksgiving celebration, CBS and its network of local stations sank into a similar dispute.

In a statement to THR, Dish fought back, blaming the blackout of AT & T, HBO's new parent company, claiming that the media giant was exploiting its power to "influence pay-TV providers and competing consumers ". Dish said they would look for a "baseball" type arbitration process to restore HBO to its service.

Dish said eligible customers of its service and Sling TV who subscribe to HBO and Cinemax would be credited on their bills for the duration of the outage.