CBS, Dish extend deadline to negotiate new contract

(Reuters) - CBS Corp and satellite operator Dish Network avoided a blackout of CBS TV shows and its heavily watched Thanksgiving Day NFL game as the two sides agreed to extend the deadline into next week in order to hash out the details of a new contract. The two sides had been working under a previous five-day extension, announced on Nov. 20, that kept the nation's most watched network and its CBS Sports cable channel on the air. The tense negotiations are the latest in a long string of disputes between media conglomerates and distributors over the price of carrying cable channels. On Nov. 21, Dish Network Corp and Time Warner Inc's Turner Broadcasting unit "mutually decided" to restore CNN, the Cartoon Network and other channels to Dish subscribers after the channels had been blacked out for a month. The decision also kept Turner's other channels, including TBS and TNT, on the air as the two sides agreed to negotiate past a Dec. 5 deadline that could have resulted in those channels also going black. CBS is also no stranger to blackouts. Last year CBS won a high profile fight with Time Warner Cable Inc, which backed down and gave into CBS's demands after Time Warner pulled CBS programs for a month in several of its markets. (Reporting by Ronald Grover in Los Angeles and Jennifer Saba in New York; Additional reporting by Abhirup Roy in Bangalore; Editing by Richard Chang)