Numerous outlets are reporting on a showdown between between NBCUniversal, the entertainment giant which owns USA Network, and Charter Communications, who earlier this year added Time-Warner Cable to its holdings and now distributes cable television channels to 16 million Americans. Charter has rejected NBCU’s package price for their channels and unless a deal is struck, will stop carrying them when their current contract expires this Sunday, Jan. 1, 2017.
In addition to USA, home of WWE’s Raw and SmackDown LIVE, NBCU’s package includes NBC, Bravo, E!, Syfy, MSNBC, CNBC, and Oxygen, and the first big programming casualty would be the Sunday Night Football game with major playoff implications between the Green Bay Packers and Detroit Lions.
NBCU has launched a marketing campaign aimed at getting viewers to pressure Charter to re-sign and ensure no disruption in service. John Cena’s image is used in the campaign, which has produced the above video and a website, delivermyshows.com.
If no deal is reached by Monday night, the Jan. 2 Raw featuring the return of Goldberg would not be available to a significant number of potential viewers, including in 1.6 million homes in the Los Angeles area and 1 million in New York, where Charter is the main carrier to Manhattan.