Dish Sues NBCU, Alleging Breach of Contract

Screen crawls warning Dish Network subscribers about possible dropping of NBC programming violate contracts the network has with Dish, the DBS company said in a lawsuit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Rockford, Illinois. NBCUniversal Media "decided to bombard Dish subscribers with prohibited messages" on their screens, on NBCU's Facebook page and on a new NBCU website, Dish said, saying because of the difficulty getting a lost subscriber back, it "has incurred and will continue to incur substantial damages as a result." Dish said its retransmission consent and affiliation agreements signed with NBCU March 13, 2013, include prohibited message language, and NBCU began its campaign on Monday. In the suit, Dish asks for unspecified financial damages. NBCU didn't comment.