Voom Files Suit Against EchoStar
Dispute Stems From Dish's Desire To Reposition HD Suite To Less-Penetrated Tier
By R. Thomas Umstead -- Multichannel News, 2/26/2008 2:29:00 PM
An intra-family battle is brewing between Rainbow Media’s Voom suite of high-definition services and Voom satellite owner EchoStar Satellite LLC.
Earlier this month, New York State Supreme Court judge Richard Lowe granted Voom a preliminary injunction/temporary restraining order barring EchoStar’s Dish Network from moving the HD service’s 15 channels to a lower-penetrated HD tier, according to sources close to both parties.
Multichannel News did not have access to the court filing at press time.
In 2005 EchoStar for $200 million acquired Voom's satellite from Rainbow owner Cablevision Systems Corp. for $200 million nd currently offers the VOOM channels on its $20 Dish HD Ultimate tier.
In a statement, a Rainbow spokesman said: "Because we are in the midst of ongoing litigation with EchoStar, it would be inappropriate for us to comment further at this time.”
EchoStar officials would not comment at press time.
Voom’s dispute with EchoStar over carriage comes two months after HDNet settled a lawsuit it had filed against DirecTV after the satellite leader tried to move the Mark Cuban-owned network to a new tier of “HD-only” channels. In the settlement, HDNet stayed where it was and HDNet Movies shifted to the tier.
