For subscribers of AT&T’s U-verse service, “The Martha Stewart Show” hangs in the balance.
AT&T and Hallmark have become the latest scufflers in an ongoing spat of carriage battles between cable/satellite service providers and cable and broadcast networks.
With negotiations stalled on a renewal to a carriage deal that expires Aug. 31, the battle went public Thursday.
After an AT&T statement chastised the cable channel for releasing details of the negotiations to the press, Hallmark president and CEO Bill Abbott fired off this statement late Thursday afternoon:
“It is unfortunate that AT&T U-verse’s statement of the situation is inaccurate,” he wrote. “The are a multi-billion dollar organization bullying one of the nation’s last surviving independent cable networks by insisting on unreasonable rates that would seriously jeopardize our longevity. Hallmark Channel and Hallmark Movie Channel are two fo the few remaining family-friendly networks offered on television and represent less than 1 percent of AT&Ts’ total basic programming fees! Although we would have preferred to conduct the negotiations privately, we have been forced to comment since AT&T advised its customers weeks ago that Hallmark Channels may be dropped on August 31, 2010.
Earlier Thursday, AT&T released the following:
“We are making every effort to reach a fair agreement and continue providing these channels to our customers. Frankly, we're surprised that Hallmark has decided to take its negotiations public, instead of working with us in good faith, especially since we've made numerous offers to Hallmark. We’re disappointed that Hallmark is acting in a way that may punish viewers and is trying to charge AT&T more than what similarly-sized and smaller TV competitors pay for these channels. We want to continue to carry the channels under terms similar to our current agreement.”
