Cablevision And Viacom End Feud, Settle Long-Running Lawsuit

The companies said in a joint statement Friday they had resolved the legal fight and were "entering into mutually beneficial business arrangements".

No further details of the settlement were disclosed.

Cablevision and Viacom have settled a long-running lawsuit.

Cablevision has settled its antitrust suit against Viacom that challenged the media company's bundling of channels.

But Viacom countercharged that Cablevision's negotiations for a 2012 carriage agreement were a "complete sham", meant to extract favorable terms for the core channels and then get a court to void the rest.

Many programmers including NBC Universal, Walt Disney and Viacom price their channel packages in such a way that makes distributors to transmit all channels offered by them.

The cable company alleged that Viacom engaged in a "per se" illegal tying arrangement by bundling "must-have networks" like MTV, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central with lesser-viewed ones such as Palladia, MTV Hits and VH1 Classic.

However, cable companies had issues with the way major programmers bundled their channels, arguing that it was often more expensive to carry a few main channels than to carry the entire bundle.

Cablevision was recently sold to European-based Altice for $17.7 billion, though the deal requires the consent of regulators.

The settlement does not come as a surprise as rumors of such between Cablevision and Viacom had been surfacing since September this year.