• by David Goetzl  @dgoetzl, February 12, 2007

Court TV is back on the Dish Network lineup. The satellite operator and Turner Broadcasting had battled over how much Dish would pay to offer the legal-themed network. Court TV had been blacked out since Jan. 1.

The deal puts Court TV back in about 10% of the homes it had reached. The lesser distribution had the potential to disrupt ratings guarantees the network had given advertisers, based on the previous 86 million homes Court TV says it reached. The former Dish/Court deal expired after midnight on Dec. 31.

A Dish spokesperson declined to provide any details.

Under the new arrangement, Court will be restored to the same channel position it occupied before the Dish standoff. The network is offered as part of a package that does not reach all of Dish's 13 million customers.

The deal comes four days after Dish reached a carriage agreement with Court's Time Warner sibling HBO. But a Turner rep said the Court deal is a stand-alone. It also is separate from any ongoing deals involving other Turner networks, such as TNT, CNN or Cartoon, the rep added.

Often, cable/satellite operators and programmers make carriage deals that lump together a fleet of networks to get more favorable terms for either party. (The HBO deal did include a caveat: the pay-cable outlet had to drop its suit against Dish parent EchoStar, and EchoStar its FCC complaint against it.)

Last year, Turner acquired Court, which carries legal news during the day and more general entertainment fare at night. The company has negotiated other carriage agreements for the network, but declined to cite name operators.

The dispute between Dish and Court was relatively low-profile and collegial compared to some contentious carriage standoffs with blackouts, in which the parties wage highly publicized campaigns to sway public opinion. Last year, Dish and Lifetime had a much more acrimonious battle when that network was taken off the air.

During the recent Court TV standoff, Dish said Turner sought an undeserved 70% increase in rights fees. Turner countered that Dish would not pay "the standard industry rate."