Cablevision and Viacom End Bundle Litigation

Cablevision Systems, which in September agreed to be purchased by European Telecom giant Altice in a deal worth $17.7 billion, said it has settled its litigation with programmer Viacom.

Programmers including Viacom, Walt Disney Co and NBC Universal priced their packages in ways that encouraged distributors to carry all their channels.

The companies said that they are “simultaneously entering into mutually beneficial business arrangements”, though details of the settlement and arrangements were not disclosed.

Cablevision claimed that Viacom forced it to carry 14 lesser-watched channels as a condition of getting carriage of MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and BET, known as Viacom’s “core” channels.

While neither company would comment on the settlement, the new deal comes amid a broad ratings decline for traditional TV channels that has caused New York-based Viacom shares to fall 34 percent this year. The harm alleged was that Cablevision couldn’t use its resources on other independently operated networks.

A New York federal judge in June 2014 rejected Viacom’s motion for the lawsuit’s dismissal pointing out that Cablevision had “pleaded facts sufficient to support plausibly an inference of anti-competitive effects”.

It had asked the court to void the 2012 agreement, alleging Viacom had “coerced” it to sign it “by threatening to impose massive financial penalties”.

Instead, the parties have reached an undisclosed agreement.