After a full month of Time Warner Cable subscribers in select areas going without CBS and Showtime, the TV network and Time Warner Cable have finally come to an agreement. TWC cable subscribers in New York, Los Angeles and Dallas should have CBS, Showtime, CBS Sports and Smithsonian Channel back, effective 3:00 p.m. PST.
Deadline shared the statement from CBS' Les Moonves, which announces that CBS has concluded their content carriage agreement with Time Warner Cable, and that CBS should be back on TWC systems in New York, Los Angeles and Dallas effective immediately. Showtime is back for cable subscribers across the nation. Moonves describes the agreement "new and beneficial" and states that things will go back to normal for their viewers.
I am pleased to inform you that this evening we concluded our content carriage agreement with Time Warner Cable. Effective immediately, CBS will be back on the Time Warner Cable systems in New York, Los Angeles and Dallas, and Showtime will be available to their subscribers across the nation. All other disruptions to our viewers will cease, and things will go back to normal, with a new and beneficial agreement in place.This was a far more protracted dispute than anyone at CBS anticipated, but in spite of the pain it caused to all of us, and most importantly the inconvenience to our viewers who were affected, it was an important one, and one worth pursuing to a satisfactory conclusion. That has been achieved. The final agreements with Time Warner Cable deliver to us all the value and terms that we sought in these discussions. We are receiving fair compensation for CBS content and we also have the ability to monetize our content going forward on all the new, developing platforms that are right now transforming the way people watch television.
(Read the full statement here.)
I don't think anyone expected this carriage dispute to go on as long as it did. Then again, it's not exactly a common occurrence for a major TV network to be dropped by a cable network. Still, a month is a long time for a channel to go dark. In this case, CBS viewers were without summer shows like Big Brother and Under the Dome, while Showtime subscribers were missing out on the latest episodes of Dexter and the premium cable channel's newest drama Ray Donovan. Fans still have time to get caught up before those series wrap up for the summer. Dexter is drawing closer and closer to its series finale. (Catch the preview for this Sunday night's episode here.)
On the bright side, the channels return weeks ahead of the new and returning fall series, including Mom, which stars Allison Janney and Anna Faris, and The Crazy Ones, which stars Sarah Michelle Gellar and Robin Williams. There's also the return of How I Met Your Mother for its final season. On the sports side, viewers have the start of the NFL season to anticipate, along with the U.S. Open semis/finals.
