Starz asks for FCC help regarding carriage dispute with Altice USA

Starz has asked the FCC for help regardling its carriage dispute with cable operator Altice, FierceCable reported, citing an emergency petition for injunctive relief filed with the FCC. The filing follows up on a petition filed in January for declaratory ruling. 

Starz said it there have been many customer complaints  about the deletion of the Starz Channels, with people either demanding  their reinstatement or asking for money back for the services that have been stopped. Starz said it has 49,000 calls and nearly 8,300 emails to date to Cablevision about the carriage of Starz, StarzEncore and MoviePlex on Cablevision. “Starz understands that many of these subscribers have been unable to reach a Cablevision customer service representative. Specifically, callers have experienced unanswered and dropped calls, excessive wait times, unavailability of live customer service,” the company said. Among its claims, Starz says Altice took down its channels without giving customers a proper 30-day notice. 

For its part, Altice continued to respond that the claims by Starz are “without merit.” Altice said it deleted the channels after Starz launched an a la carte streaming service following the negotiation of its last programming deal with Optimum. Altice added that it has launched replacement channels for the Starz networks, which include Hallmark Drama, Sony movies, MGM HD, HD Net Movies and Flix. 

Sources close to the negotiations say Altice is looking to distribute Starz the same a la carte way it does on its other recently acquired US cable system, Suddenlink.