Carriage Deals

Add Cablevision Systems to the list of multichannel-TV companies adding a $2.98 additional monthly fee to help cover the rising cost of sports programming.

Cablevision is the third pay TV provider to slap an additional fee on customers to off - set high sports-channel license fees, which Cablevision claims account for one-third of its overall content costs.

Mediacom Communications' busy run of content dealmaking have positioned the cable company to expand its "TV Everywhere" offerings, giving customers greater access to live and on demand broadcast and cable content and expanded TV Everywhere options across a variety of devices. It's also enabled a new expansion of Spanish-langage offerings in its local markets.

After more than a decade in the rural cable trenches, Trust Cable president Steve Inzinna threw in the towel last March, selling his 2,000-subscriber cable system in Mississippi to a neighboring operator after rising programming, equipment and regulatory costs became too much to bear. He was one of the lucky ones.

Charter Communications said Tuesday that it has renewed its carriage agreement with CBS Corp., including retransmission consent deals for all CBS-owned stations as well as  cable channels Showtime Networks, CBS Sports Network and Smithsonian Channel.

The Walt Disney Co. extended its string of comprehensive carriage deals on Tuesday, after the programming giant reached agreement with AT&T’s U-Verse service.