Disney Wins Injunction Vs. EchoStar

To stop Dish from dropping ABCFamily tonight.

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A U.S. district court judge issued a temporary restraining order Monday barring satellite television provider EchoStar Communications Co. from dropping the ABC Family channel owned by The Walt Disney Co.

EchoStar had said it would drop the channel as early as midnight Monday because it lacked satellite capacity and had to trim its offerings. It said it targeted ABC Family because of low ratings.

An EchoStar spokeswoman declined comment, saying she had not received word from company attorneys about the ruling. The court will review the request for injunction on Jan. 10.

MORE: biz.yahoo.com/apf/011231/...uit_1.html (http://biz.yahoo.com/apf/011231/disney_echostar_lawsuit_1.html)

ADMIN COMMENT: Edited message to add news story and link. Thanks for posting RKing! Hope you don't mind.

I am happy to see this ruling.

While many people may thing Disney is evil we must remember that Dish tried dropping this channel when FOX purchased them, when FOX threatened legal action Dish backed down.

While I have no problem with Dish sticking up for itself their way they went about trying to get rid of this channel were all wrong, each press release about this had a different reason on why the channel was being dropped, Dish did not stick to its guns on why they were doing it, they were just bound and determined to do it.

Now while I must say I am happy about this, we must understand that there is a 10 year contract in place for this channel. And while there is a contract none of us home users do not know the contents of this contract. There MAY be an out clause if the channel was sold, I for one don't know that, however if this was truely the case I am sure Dish would have made a bigger deal out of this clause.

Another thing we must remeber is that this fight could get nasty, this is only a temporary restraining order, there is sure to be a major court fight over this one.

Charlie must remember that each move of this chess match he is playing is being closely watched, and his actions here could have a heavy baring on his merger.

If Charlie is smart his fight will have to show he is dropping this channel for the benefit of the consumer.

Thats my feeling on it anyways.

Scott

Scott, I thought they did go to court and the ruling was E* acted too late to use the change of ownership clause to end carrying the channel. Thought I saw that somewhere, could be wrong.

Does anybody know if D* is still planning on dropping ABCFAM?

I did read where ESPN Classics may be the channel to drop since Dish has been told they cannot drop ABC Family. So..keep an eye out tonight at midnight ET to see if Dish does drop the channel.

If Dish Drops a channel Id guess for it to be around 6AM not midnight, but anyways lests hope that doesnt happen. Congrads to the Mouse, ABCFam will still be on E* :) Im not a big fan of this channel, but I dont like the idea of losing channels and Disney will put new programming on this channel so maybe in time Ill like it.

Steve

The decision is temporary, though. There is a chance that in 10 days Echostar might be given the green light to drop the channel. Its all according to what happens next in court.

I'm sure hope Darth Maus is happy...

Although I never watch ABC Family, I am happy that they are keeping it because it does have somewhat of a following. It actually does have some quality programming.

Well its after Midnight and ESPNClassics is still here, Sports Century is on right now.

Steve