Carriage disputes are when a cable company is reluctant to pay the price that a television station is charging for the right to show the station on a certain cable or satellite network. This is one of the arguments put forth by the Trump administration as an objection to the AT&T Time Warner merger. The Department of Justice is claiming that the merger of AT&T and Time Warner could give AT&T an unfair advantage in carriage agreements since they would own a bunch of channels like HBO, CNN, TCM, TNT, Cartoon Network, Turner Broadcasting, plus Warner Brothers Studios which owns DC Comics. Think Batman and Superman.
Another example of this is Cox Enterprises, who owns Cox Media Group and therefore some TV stations. They also own Cox Communications, a cable and Internet company. Cox Media Group is withholding some of their local stations from Frontier Communications in some areas due to pricing disagreements. So if you have Frontier Internet and video service in some areas you might not be able to watch some Cox Media Group stations.
