Cablevision, Tribune Media Reach New Content And Media Agreement

(RTTNews) - Cablevision Systems Corp. (CVC) and Tribune Media Co. (TRCO) Thursday announced a broad-based multi-year content and media agreement. Specific financial terms were not disclosed.

Under the agreement, Cablevision's Optimum TV customers will continue to receive Tribune Media's television stations in New York, Hartford and Philadelphia.

In addition, Cablevision will launch Tribune Media's general entertainment cable network, WGN America, to its New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut video customers from January 2016.

Cablevision also renewed its use of TV listings and movie data provided by Gracenote, Tribune Media's digital data and entertainment company.

The addition of Optimum TV customers in early 2016 will extend WGN America's conversion to a basic cable channel to nearly 80 percent of the network's footprint. This will expand its reach to 76 million homes.

As part of this agreement, Tribune Media has signed on to Cablevision's portfolio of audience data and analytics. This leverages Cablevision's first-party, census-level audience tuning data to analyze consumers' viewing habits and preferences.

Tribune Media can utilize this anonymized data to inform programming and advertising sales activity for all networks it operates.