Dish Network and Fox have reached an agreement that will have a direct impact in the Milwaukee TV market, keeping Channel 6, the local Fox affiliate, from being switched off on Monday.
The agreement also restores FX, National Geographic Channel and regional sports channels to Dish subscribers who lost the at the beginning of this month.
Here's the quote from David Shull, senior vice president of programming for Dish Network:
"After prolonged negotiations to reach a fair deal, we’re pleased to enter into a long term agreement with Fox and to assure our customers that they can continue to enjoy these channels... We thank our customers, our retail and channel partners, and our employees for their support through these negotiations, which we believe resulted in a fair deal that reinforces Dish Network's position as the best value in television."
Here's the quote from Mike Hopkins, president of Fox Networks Affiliate Sales and Marketing:
"I want to thank our partners at Dish Network who worked tirelessly to help us reach a successful conclusion... This agreement provides a strategic partnership between Fox and Dish to bring the best programming to Dish subscribers."
Financial terms weren't disclosed.
Tim Cuprisin is the media columnist for OnMilwaukee.com. He's been a journalist for 30 years, starting in 1979 as a police reporter at the old City News Bureau of Chicago, a legendary wire service that's the reputed source of the journalistic maxim "if your mother says she loves you, check it out." He spent a couple years in the mean streets of his native Chicago, and then moved on to the Green Bay Press-Gazette and USA Today, before coming to the Milwaukee Journal in 1986.
A general assignment reporter, Cuprisin traveled Eastern Europe on several projects, starting with a look at Poland after five years of martial law, and a tour of six countries in the region after the Berlin Wall opened and Communism fell. He spent six weeks traversing the lands of the former Yugoslavia in 1994, linking Milwaukee Serbs, Croats and Bosnians with their war-torn homeland.
In the fall of 1994, a lifetime of serious television viewing earned him a daily column in the Milwaukee Journal (and, later the Journal Sentinel) focusing on TV and radio. For 15 years, he has chronicled the changes rocking broadcasting, both nationally and in Milwaukee, an effort he continues at OnMilwaukee.com.
When he's not watching TV, Cuprisin enjoys tending to his vegetable garden in the backyard of his home in Whitefish Bay, cooking and traveling.
