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In an interesting developing story, NBC Universal is at odds with Charter Communications over the renewal of rights fees for carrying NBC Universal broadcast and cable networks, including the USA Network, which carries WWE's "Monday Night Raw" and "Smackdown Live" and E!, which carries WWE reality series "Total Divas" and "Total Bellas."
Charter Communications owns Spectrum, a new brand name that includes the the former Time-Warner Cable and Brighthouse Networks cable providers (who Charter purchased in 2014). Spectrum is the second largest cable company in the United States with a subscriber base in the area of 25-30 million.
The current deal between the two sides is set to expire as of 1/1/17, according to Variety and if the channels are pulled, it would be a NBC Universal decision made to help leverage a new deal. Beyond The USA Network and E!, 14 networks could be pulled in total, including NBC, Syfy, Cloo, CNBC, MSNBC, Bravo, Oxygen and others.
NBC Universal began running crawls on programming yesterday evening warning Spectrum/Charter customers that they could conceivably lose the stations on 1/1/17 at midnight if a new deal isn't made, pushing those customers to request Charter/Spectrum get the deal signed and sealed.
WWE's John Cena is featured in a graphic NBC Universal has released on a website designed to update Spectrum subscribers at www.delivermyshows.com, appearing alongside the cast of E!'s "Keeping Up with the Kardashians" and NBC's "The Voice", reminding viewers that they could lose those shows, as well as NFL games aired on NBC, if they do not come to an agreement. The website specifically mentions WWE in an audio message that relates major shows that could be dropped by Spectrum.
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