Outlander, Power fans rejoice! Starz, Altice deal officially reached
Today, the broadcaster and the network have confirmed that they have reached a new carriage agreement for years, which means that Starz, Encore, and many other networks associated with them are now back on the air. Optimum customers did miss new episodes of Counterpart during the carriage dispute, and the same goes for a special preview for both Power season 5 and Outlander season 4. Nonetheless, we remained hopeful through much of the downtime that a deal would get resolved, mostly because they often do before any significant programming is lost. (Luckily, this didn’t get to the point that the AMC dispute with Dish did many years ago.) Power is Starz’s most-watched show and it is premiering later this summer. If there was some programming that was lost there, it wouldn’t have been good for either the network or Altice. Nobody wanted things to get to that point.
In a statement, Hakim Boubazine, co-president and COO of Altice USA had the following to say:
“Our goal is to give customers the flexibility, choice and entertainment they want at a great value, and we appreciate their patience while we worked to reach a deal that was in their best interest.”
Meanwhile, Starz COO Jeffrey Hirsch added the following:
“Starz is very pleased that both companies found a mutually beneficial way to expand our relationship over the next several years to offer the best content possible to millions of Altice USA subscribers.”
So, for now, rejoice if you are one of the viewers of these shows who had Optimum in the northeast United States. We wish that we could say that this will be last instance of this for a while between a network and a provider, but it probably won’t be. We often tend to be prone to seeing a few of these transpire every year.
Are you happy that a deal has finally been reached? Share right now in the comments! Meanwhile, be sure to also like CarterMatt on Facebook in the event you want to get some other TV news. (Photo: Starz.)