Fox News Sues Charter Communications

Fox News on Tuesday sued Charter Communications Inc., the nation's second-largest cable operator, for breach of contract and fraud.

The suit, filed in New York, comes in the wake of Charter's recent $60 billion acquisition of Time Warner Cable. Fox News, a unit of 21st Century Fox, claims Charter is illegally seeking to apply Time Warner Cable's channel-carriage rates to carry Fox News and its sister channel Fox Business Network in all its homes.

Time Warner Cable has paid lower rates to carry Fox News than what Charter has been paying.

"We have a contract with Fox News and expect them to honor it," a Charter spokesman said in a statement. "We have not yet seen the complaint."

Fox News is the second major programmer to accuse Charter of breaching contracts. Earlier this month, Spanish-language broadcaster Univision Communications Inc. filed a similar suit against Charter. Univision owns multiple cable networks as well as 59 local television stations.

According to Tuesday's suit, Charter isn't adhering to a 2014 agreement it signed with Fox News to distribute the two channels and instead is applying rates from an old agreement the network had with Time Warner Cable.

Fights between programmers and distributors over fees have been on the rise for the past several years. Distributors have been consolidating in large part to increase leverage in negotiations with programmers. Content companies fear that they will be squeezed by distributors, hurting profits and leaving less money to create programming.

Fox News parent 21st Century Fox and Wall Street Journal owner News Corp. were part of the same company until mid-2013.

Write to Joe Flint at [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 19, 2016 14:05 ET (18:05 GMT)

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