(Bloomberg) -- Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. reached an early renewal of an agreement to provide networks such as TNT and CNN to Comcast Corp.’s roughly 12.8 million cable-TV customers.
The deal avoids the channel blackouts that can sometimes come with fee negotiations and includes continued carriage of all of the Warner Bros. networks. Financial terms of the multiyear contract weren’t disclosed in a statement Monday.
TNT has been renewed at roughly the same fee as before and the overall money Warner Bros. is receiving is up, according to people familiar with the agreement who asked to not be identified discussing the specific terms.
Warner Bros. shares were up about 5% to $11.22 as of 10 a.m. New York time.
Fee negotiations have been contentious as consumers cancel cable-TV subscriptions in favor of streaming services like Netflix Inc. and cable distributors look for ways to reduce costs. Warner Bros. has been under pressure because Comcast outbid it for the rights to air National Basketball Association games in an 11-year deal that begins next season.
As part of these negotiations, Warner Bros. agreed to provide the ad-supported version of its Max streaming service to Comcast’s roughly 10 million Sky TV customers in the UK and Ireland. Comcast was due to lose the rights to Warner Bros. programming such as its HBO network for Sky next year.
Comcast’s Sky pay-TV unit sued Warner Bros. in September saying that under the terms of a 2019 agreement it had the right to share in the production of shows Warner Bros. is developing, including the Harry Potter TV series. The lawsuit has now been resolved.
In September, Warner Bros. and Charter Communications Inc. renewed their distribution agreement. Charter, the nation’s largest cable TV distributor, kept all the Warner Bros. channels on its systems. The monthly fee Warner Bros. charged for TNT was kept flat, even though the channel is losing the NBA games.
Charter is also offering its basic cable customers the ad-supported Max streaming service at no additional cost.
In addition to those already mentioned, New York-based Warner Bros. owns cable-TV networks such as the Discovery Channel, HGTV, Food Network, OWN, TLC and TBS.
(Updates with trading, details of the deal in third, fourth, fifth paragraphs.)
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