Dish restores Turner Broadcasting channels

Dish Network Corp. and Time Warner Inc.’s Turner Broadcasting reached an agreement to restore channels including CNN and Cartoon Network, resolving a dispute going back to October.

The contract extension brings back Adult Swim, TruTV, TCM, Boomerang and CNN en Espanol, Turner said in a statement today. The stations had been dark since Oct. 21, when the companies failed to negotiate a new contract. Throughout the blackout, Dish customers still had access to TBS and TNT, Turner’s biggest cable channels.

Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen had said that Turner was asking for double-digit percentage increases in fees for CNN, while viewership is down by half. Both sides have traded harsh words in the dispute. Ergen threatened to permanently drop Turner’s cable networks and said CNN is “not quite the product that they used to be.” On Time Warner’s earnings call, Turner’s chief executive officer said Ergen’s comments about the contract dispute were “very antagonistic and aggressive.”

Dish rose 2.3 percent to $73.88 at 1:02 p.m. New York time, while New York-based Time Warner fell 0.5 percent to $80.16.

Earlier today, Englewood, Colorado-based Dish agreed to a five-day extension of its expiring contract with CBS Corp. Negotiations between the two are continuing, they said.