Outdoor Channel Nets Comcast
By Linda Moss -- Multichannel News, 1/8/2002 3:00:00 AM
The Outdoor Channel has forged a carriage deal, for analog and digital distribution, with Comcast Corp., officials said Monday.
Under the agreement, Comcast has 'small benchmarks' in terms of the subscribers it has guaranteed The Outdoor Channel, according to Outdoor Channel CEO Andy Dale.
But his is pleased about the pact and the MSO's even-handedness, as Comcast now owns another network in this genre, Outdoor Life Network.
Dale had been worried last September about his network's prospects with Comcast when it dropped his network from its system in Nashville, Tenn., and added its own Outdoor Life there instead.
The Outdoor Channel lost 30,000 digital subscribers there.
'We had some concerns about Comcast, and they have put them to rest,' Dale said.
With this new carriage deal, Comcast already is rolling out The Outdoor Channel in Little Rock, Ark., to 85,000 analog homes.
'Broadly speaking, they made us whole,' Dale said.
In a prepared statement Tom Hurley, Comcast's senior vice president of programming, said that the agreement with The Outdoor Channel 'will help us continue to increase viewing options for our customers.'
The Outdoor Channel, an independent, has 13.5 million subscribers.
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