Please note: This article contains MASSIVE spoilers for the 5th season of “Breaking Bad.” You’ve been warned.

For the past two months, AMC has prefaced each new episode of the critically-acclaimed drama Breaking Bad by alerting viewers to the existence of BreakingBadStorySync.com: A second-screen experience for each episode, timed to update with the show if you skipped the DVR and watched live.

Second screen experiences are nothing new, but they’re something I’ve always primarily associated with award shows and lighter fare. I was curious as to what a second-screen experience for a gritty cable drama like Breaking Bad would be like. So for the 2012 finale, I made sure I was home in time, with my laptop on the couch with me.

Powered by the real-time web platform Echo (whose website was down as of writing — Google cache here), Breaking Bad Story Sync proved to be a relatively entertaining mix of photos, video, polls and flashbacks, cleverly tied to the on-screen action — a great way to engage fans. But it was also, at times, a crass effort to get people watching ads — while watching ads, on top of ads.

The episode, “Gliding Over All,” began with anti-hero Walter White (Bryan Cranston) gazing intently at a fly — Story Sync began by reminding us about the 3rd season episode where Walt was super-obsessed with a fly in the lab…

…before moving on, a few minutes later, to poll viewers on whether or not the shocking murder which ended last week’s episode was necessary.

(For not the last time, the poll showed that an overwhelming majority of people are no longer rooting for Walt.)

One more poll popped up before we reached the first commercial break of the episode, at which point I expected to see some bonus content to keep those normally used to a DVR experience from getting twitchy. Instead, we got this:

Yeah, that’s a banner ad right above another ad.

There were three more ads for the SRT over the course of the Story Sync experience, turning my two-screen viewing experience into two screens of commercials. In addition, when I clicked to watch a video replay of a violent prisoner-shanking montage (which was the StorySync update immediately following that montage airing on TV), the video began with a 30-second pre-roll ad — for Breaking Bad.

Yo dawg, I heard you like “Breaking Bad” so I put an ad for “Breaking Bad” in your “Breaking Bad” Story Sync experience.

Overall, the technology powering the service performed well — there were no lags in updates, no loading issues, and the interactive elements were glitch-free. I also liked the subtle “tock” noise which indicated an update — just enough to alert you without being distracting.

Beyond the technology, though, watching with Story Sync had two strong benefits: First, the polls and quizzes, which at times lacked subtlety:

But did offer some fun interactivity:

Second: The flashbacks and reminders of past episodes, which were timed perfectly with the on-screen action. If you’ve never watched Breaking Bad, know that it’s a show which loves thematic callbacks and inside jokes, a fact which Story Sync celebrated all episode long:

The biggest drawback to a second-screen experience on a drama like Breaking Bad is that like many sophisticated dramas, there are often big moments that are played quietly. Which is to say that I was looking at my stupid computer when, on screen, it was revealed that Walt had brought along his trusty vial of ricin poison to his meeting with a potentially expendable contact — a big character and plot moment, and one that I completely missed.

In fact, I didn’t learn about it until the next day, when I read one of the many blog recaps of the episode. Instead, I thought that the Story Sync update which followed that scene was foreshadowing ricin’s appearance.

Despite that unfortunate glitch, I overall found the whole experience intriguing, especially those moments which proved that whoever was behind the experience had some snark in them:

Second-screen viewing is definitely not a fad, and leaning into the curve of distracted audiences isn’t a bad strategy, especially when you can also simultaneously encourage real-time engagement. And given that Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan has said he’s worried about how DVRing affects the current TV business model, it’s hardly a surprise that this show is one of the first to play with this combination of elements.

The next time we might see Story Sync again will be when The Walking Dead returns for Season 3 this October (it originally launched during Dead‘s second season last spring). But while my first experience was interesting, I’m not sure it was compelling enough to make me forego using my DVR for future AMC programming — especially given the additional ads that came with it.

Perhaps it’s enough to just watch a TV show — especially when it’s one of the best shows on television. Perhaps I’m more old-fashioned than I thought.

But a day later, during its own second quarter Come to Wall Street address, AMC Networks struck a contrarian tone: Not being in Dish’s 14 million homes since July 1 didn’t affect Q2 earnings, but Q3 will be a very different matter.

“Although Dish Network’s termination has reduced the company’s total subscribers by approximately 13 percent, the impact on our (cash flow) and operating income, if it continues, will be materially higher,” the company said in its Thursday earnings release.

Also read: Day 27 of the Dish vs. AMC standoff – where’s the subscriber revolt?

As for AMC’s second quarter performance, it wasn’t too shabby, with the company reporting a 53 percent spike in profit to $41.5 million on a 12.2 percent increase in revenue to $327.6 million.

Key revenue drivers remain ad sales and purchases of AMC’s critically lauded series, including Mad Men, Breaking Bad and Walking Dead on disc, download and streaming.

Relative to other cable conglomerates, AMC Networks gets a smaller portion of its revenue from pay TV affiliate fees — an amount that totals only around $418 million a year, according to a memo put out last week by Lazar Capital analyst Barton Crockett.

Also read: Why Breaking Bad didn’t scare Dish, but Walking Dead will

With shows like Walking Dead becoming mainstream audience hits — the zombie series’ second-season premiere scored the biggest audience ever for a basic cable series last October — AMC is  trying to significantly increase its carriage fees in renewal talks.

But the conglomerate, spun off from Cablevision last year, claims it never even got to plead its case with Dish before the satellite carrier pulled its AMC flagship channel, along with the smaller IFC and WE TV, off its service on June 30.

AMC still insists that Dish is trying to drum up leverage for a separate legal matter — Cablevision and AMC are suing Dish for $2.5 billion for dropping the now-defunct Voom HD channels in 2008. Dish was ruled to have destroyed evidence in the case, which goes to trial in September.

Also read: AMC – “Dish never even talked rates with us”

If this is indeed factoring into settlement negotiations, Dish is doing little to reveal any progress made.

On Wednesday, Dish co-founder and chairman Ergen ramped up the rhetoric as only he can. Turns out the Englewood, Co.-situated Ergen family isn’t a fan of AMC series, even though they’ll collectively be up for 34 Emmys next month.

“I’ve had satellite television for as long as satellite television has been around, and there’s never been one minute that I know of anybody in my family, or anybody who’s came to my house, has ever watched one second of any of those channels,” Ergen told investors Wednesday.

“They’re critically acclaimed but not viewed as much by our audience,” he added. “And our customers can go to iTunes and get ‘Mad Men’ the same time it’s on.”

Ergen also claimed that Dish could pay the entire bill for his subscribers’ purchases of AMC series on iTunes and still come out ahead of paying AMC’s increased licensing fee.

Of course, it’s still early August. Ergen’s position could change on or before Sept. 18, when the Voom HD trial begins; or on or around Sept. 23, if Mad Men and Breaking Bad clean up at the Emmys; or on Oct. 15, when Nielsen’s Fast National ratings appear for the third-season Walking Dead premiere the night earlier.

Then there’s Dish’s own Q3 earnings. In an SEC filing made several weeks ago, Dish revealed that it only lost 10,000 subscribers in the second quarter, beating analysts forecast. It will no doubt be interesting to see what the company’s subscriber churn is during the current quarter with AMC not around.

Nearly four weeks after blacking out AMC Networks channels — and popular adult drama Breaking Bad along with them– Dish Network has seemingly done just that. And this could have broad implications in the pay TV business, where programmers have typically held most of the leverage when negotiating new affiliate agreements.

Asked Friday if a revolt among Dish’s 14 million subscribers has inspired the company to work with AMC on a new affiliate agreement and restore its channels, a spokesman for the satellite company said there was no update to the impasse.

Also read: Why Breaking Bad doesn’t scare Dish, but Walking Dead will

“Are you hearing anything,” he asked?

Strangely, I had to respond, “No.”

If the on-air and online campaign launched by AMC to steer Dish subscribers to other pay TV services is gaining traction, AMC sure isn’t beating its chest about it. An AMC representative on Friday told us grassroots subscriber revolts take time to gestate.

I also made an inquiry into the Dish sales department. A Dish rep told me there’s no timeline for AMC, WE TV and IFC returning to the service’s channel lineup any time soon. “Those channels are gone,” he told me.

Contrast that with the DirecTV/Viacom licensing dispute earlier this month — even as the corporate rhetoric raged on both sides, DirecTV sales reps kept assuring customers that a deal to restore channels including Nickelodeon and MTV was “imminent.”

Meanwhile, a perusal of the sales charts for Apple’s iTunes store shows that the most popular TV download is the most recent episode of Breaking Bad, titled “Madrigal.” This could be seen as lending credence to Dish’s negotiating position all along — that it has no reason to increase the program licensing fee it pays AMC, because its subscribers have so many other ways to access AMC shows. (New Breaking Bad episodes are also available through Amazon Instant Video, and Netflix has seasons 1-4 of the show exclusively.)

The AMC rep we spoke, however, said the network’s shows are always highly ranked on iTunes when they’re in season.

As for AMC’s linear TV ratings — and by extension, its ad sales — losing access to Dish’s nearly 14 million homes has undoubtedly rendered a hit. Last Sunday, ratings for the “Madrigal” episode were down 21 percent from the prior week’s fifth-season-premiere, with only 2.3 million viewers tuning into the initial run of Breaking Bad.

PR-wise, there appears to be little pressure on Dish. Summarizing the dispute for its online and mobile audience on July 3, ABC News lauded Dish for not saddling its subscribers with increased program licensing costs, titling its story, “Why Dish dropping AMC might be good for consumers.”

Asked whether he thinks AMC channels will ever return to Dish, Bernstein Research senior analyst Craig Moffett backed up AMC’s assertion that this impasse all ties into an unrelated legal dispute pitting Dish against AMC and its former parent company,  Cablevision.

Also read: AMC – “Dish never even talked rates with us”

Set to go to trial in September, Dish finds itself short on leverage in the $2.5 billion dispute, which stems from its decision to drop now-defunct channel Voom HD in 2008.

When a settlement does occur, Moffett contends, the restoration of AMC’s channels will likely be part of the agreement.

In the meantime, Dish doesn’t appear to be breaking a sweat … and while no subscriber data is available beyond June 30, the day AMC channels were yanked, it appears to have found its leverage.

AMC says it’ll stream the fifth-season premiere of its hit adult drama Breaking Bad on Sunday night for the nearly 14 million Dish Network subscribers who no longer receive its channels.

While AMC series are ubiquitous through over-the-top channels like Netflix, current-season episodes of the cable network’s shows typically aren’t available through streaming.

“AMC wants its loyal Dish viewers to experience the excitement of the Breaking Bad premiere at the same time as their friends and neighbors, and we want to give Dish customers an extra week to switch providers so they can enjoy the rest of the season,” reads an AMC statement issued Thursday.

(Note: AMC said nothing about paying the $175 early termination fee for any of those disgruntled Dish subscribers.)

Dish customers can visit http://www.amctv.com/breakingbad4dish starting at 3 p.m. ET Friday and authenticate their subscription for the stream, which begins Sunday at 10 p.m. ET.

Also read: AMC – “Dish never even talked rates with us”

AMC Networks channels, including not only the flagship AMC, but also the lifestyle-oriented WE TV and the movie-based IFC, were pulled off Dish July 1, coinciding with the expiration of a carriage deal. The satellite carrier claims AMC is seeking excessively high carriage rate increases to renew the contract. AMC says no negotiation of rates has even occurred — Dish’s decision, it contends, relates to a separate litigation between the two paries. (You can read all about that here.)

So how much anti-Dish messaging will AMC be conducting during this streaming presentation Sunday? An AMC press representative didn’t respond to our inquiry.

Also read: For Netflix users, “catch-up” TV viewing has a catch

But the strategy of making Sunday’s anticipated Breaking Bad debut available differs entirely from Viacom’s decision Wednesday to pull streaming availability for most of its current programs in the wake of its carriage dispute with DirecTV.

But punch the cable programmer did just after midnight Eastern time, releasing a statement that doesn’t beat around the bush. The upshot: AMC Networks claims Dish’s decision to end carriage of AMC, IFC and WE TV has little to do with proposed carriage-rate increases and everything to do with an ongoing $2.5 billion breach-of-contract suit currently standing between the two companies.

Also read: Dish to replace AMC with Mark Cuban’s HDNet Movies

“Dish customers have lost some of their favorite shows because of an unrelated lawsuit which has nothing at all to do with our programming,” the AMC statement reads. “Dish customers will not be able to watch the new season of AMC’s Breaking Bad, premiering July 15, or upcoming seasons of The Walking Dead, Mad Men, or any of our other popular shows. We urge Dish customers who want to have access to our programming to call 1-855-KEEP-AMC or visit www.keepamc.com.”

In the same statement, AMC indicated that carriage talks continue with AT&T over carriage on U-Verse. Like Dish, the current agreement expires at midnight. But unlike Dish, there’s no indication that there’s any impasse beyond fee increases. And so far, there hasn’t been any U-Verse blackout of AMC.

Also read: Dish, America’s most over-the-top cable network, faces carriage crisis

Dish’s removal of AMC channels deprives the programmer of 14 million satellite homes — and the income from licensing fees that comes with them.

Dish, in its own statement Friday, said that AMC’s flagship channel doesn’t carry enough ratings weight with its subscribers to justify also paying for IFC and WE TV. (I don’t know about that. Mad Men is known to draw an elite but numerically finite audience. But as an AMC spokesperson reminded me Thursday, the season premiere of The Walking Dead set a basic cable ratings record in October with 11 million watchers.)

Dish also claims AMC has “devalued” its shows by letting them be streamed on over-the-top services like Netflix.

Another thought: Fox Networks also lets FX hits like Sons of Anarchy stream on Netflix. But 15 months ago, not only was it able to carve out its own carriage agreement for FX and various regional sports channels with Dish, it got the satellite service to also carry the lightly viewed National Geographic Channel.

Then again, News Corp. wasn’t suing Englewood, Colo. satellite company at the time.

Update: AT&T U-Verse and AMC announced a long-term deal Sunday, providing another option for some Dish customers who may choose to bolt over the program loss.

With a carriage renewal agreement between the satellite TV service and the cable programmer nowhere near in sight, Dish announced Friday that it’s giving AMC’s advantageous channel positions away to Mark Cuban’s HDNet outlets.

Also read: AMC, America’s most over-the-top cable network, faces carriage crisis

This will begin late Saturday night, when AMC Networks channels AMC, WE TV and IFC are slated to be removed from the channel guides of Dish’s nearly 14 million subscribers.

AMC is also facing the prospect of being pulled off of AT&T’s U-Verse service at the same time if a new carriage deal with the telco service provider can’t be hammered out. U-Verse touts around 4 million subscribers.

According to a Dish statement, HDNet Movies will take over the very visible 130 position on the Dish grid, moving down from the nether reaches of channel 383.

Meanwhile, HDNet — which is scheduled next week to morph into entertainment and music channel AXS TV through a joint venture with Cuban, Ryan Seacrest and live-events company AEG — will take over IFC’s 131 slot, moving up from channel 362.

Also read: Cuban teams with Seacrest, AEG to relaunch HDNet as ‘ESPN of pop culture’

Comcast/NBCUniversal-owned Style will assume channel 128, taking over WE TV’s position.

Asked how the enhanced positioning would benefit his channels, Cuban dryly stated in an email to paidContent that, “It certainly helps.”

He also noted another factor that helped his channels seize the opportunity — his maverick public support for Dish’s Hopper digital video recorder and its controversial new feature that automatically skips broadcast-network commercials.

Dish, meanwhile, added some acerbic punctuation to its announcement, noting that it’s replacing the AMC channels “with what the company views is stronger entertainment and movie content.”

Asked for comment Friday, an AMC representative referred paidContent to a statement provided a day earlier.

AMC is reportedly looking to increase its current affiliate rate to around 75 cents from about 40 cents per subscriber.

“A significant portion of any pay-TV bill goes to fees for content providers like AMC Networks,” said Dish senior VP of programming Dave Shull. “AMC Networks requires us to carry low-rated channels like IFC and WE to access a few popular AMC shows. The math is simple: it’s not a good value for our customers.”

Dish’s statement also continued to hammer home the company’s earlier-stated assertion that AMC has “devalued” its content by licensing to over-the-top services like Netflix, iTunes and Amazon.

On Thursday, an AMC representative disagreed strongly with paidContent’s assertion that the network was particularly aggressive in regard to licensing content for streaming.

With full archival seasons for all of AMC’s most popular original series currently available on Netflix, we’ll stand by that position. Qualitatively speaking, AMC competes in an elite class of original drama-series production, with its programming most often compared to the critically acclaimed shows found on premium channels like HBO and Showtime. And you don’t see a lot of HBO and Showtime series on Netflix.

But there’s also plenty of evidence that suggests that subscription video-on-demand access has actually helped AMC’s ratings — and by extension, Dish’s subscriber retention.

Netflix, for example, believes “catch-up” viewing for earlier seasons of Mad Men on its service contributed about 1 million new viewers to AMC’s season 5 premiere of that show over the spring.

AMC also took exception of our assertion that the appeal of the channel’s shows is somewhat “niche.” With October’s second-season premiere of The Walking Dead yielding 11 million viewers for the night, that stance should definitely be softened. However, other AMC shows, like Mad Men, tend to have a cultural impact that far outstrips their actual audience size.

But let’s not buy into Dish’s notion that it’s simply ditching a few low-rated channels. This is a big deal.

On Saturday, the channel that arguably has the three most critically acclaimed shows on television — I’m also including Breaking Bad with Mad Men and The Walking Dead — could lose access to 18 million pay TV homes.

For its part, AT&T has said nothing publicly about over-the-top services being an issue, and its impasse with AMC seems to be somewhat straightforward and about money. Rhetoric, to this point, hasn’t gotten out of hand.

Dish, however, doesn’t mention in any of its rather rhetorical statements that it’s currently being sued by AMC for $2.5 billion over its decision to stop carrying the channels of defunct HD service Vroom Networks in 2008.

How much, if any, is that litigation factoring into Dish’s impasse with AMC? Tough to say.

But with the anticipated season 5 launch of Breaking Bad set for July 15, it will be interesting to see what impact, if any, the blackout will have on Dish’s subscriber count over the next several months.

So says a report released Tuesday by IHS Screen Digest, which justifies the $20 million-and-above payments currently being made by cable channels like News Corp.’s FX to license blockbuster film titles.

For its part, FX is the resident spendthrift of the cable spectrum, paying top dollar, for example, to secure first TV window rights for current summer titles like Prometheus, Snow White and the Huntsman, The Dictator, Battleship and Madagascar 3 before they even exited theaters. Of the 50 highest-grossing movies of 2011, FX bought first-free-TV-window rights to 28 of them.

Also read: For Netflix users, “catching up” has a catch

And while the network’s brand has been increasingly tied to original series like Sons of Anarchy and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, 57 percent of FX’s air time is consumed by movies, IHS notes, and that’s driving its growth.

Now accounting for 20 percent of the revenue taken in by News Corp.’s cable empire, FX has seen income grow from just $279.7 million in 2006 to $460.7 million in 2011.

“When you look at the ramp-up of ad revenue for FX, as they’ve increased their movie content, they’ve also increased their ad revenue,” Erik Brannon, the IHS analyst who prepared the report, told paidContent.

Among networks not devoted full-time to movies (a la Fox Movie Channel), AMC also ranks high for movie reliance. While the network is known for original-series hits like Mad Men, Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead — now staples in the Netflix streaming lineup — nearly 80 percent of its air time is filled with movies.

Lets just put it this way: In Englewood, Colo., where Dish Network is headquartered, nobody seems to be circling July 15 on their calendar.

On Sunday night, Dish banished AMC Networks’ channels to the far-flung reaches of its spectrum, downgrading flagship outlet AMC from channel number 130 to the barely-ever-visited 9,609.

Also read: Dish’s Ergen: Streaming on Netflix “devalues” Mad Men

It’s the latest — but perhaps most violent  – volley in a dispute that could end with AMC channels actually being pulled off Dish when the current carriage agreement expires June 30.

With the dispute between the pay TV service and AMC looking nastier and more complicated than the average carriage impasse, it might time to wonder: What would happen if AMC, a leading-edge programmer of zeitgeist-shifting, Emmy-winning hits — and a media company that’s proven to be very comfortable providing its content to over-the-top channels — were to suddenly be cast off the nation’s No. 3 pay TV service, which has 14 million subscribers? Would it become even more aggressive in the way it licenses its shows for transactional and subscription VOD?

And what would happen if Dish were to actually make good on threats to draw the line on spiraling programming costs by refusing to grant a carriage fee increase to a rather prominent programmer? What kind of subscriber hit will it take? If the loss isn’t too great, will it embolden other multi-channel service providers to take similar stands?

It seems we could be on the cusp of answering a few of these questions.

Dish’s rather incendiary decision to downgrade the channels came after AMC ran brief onscreen promos Sunday night during presentations of its hit series Mad Men, calling Dish subscribers to action by visiting keepamcnetworks.com. Once there, they’re not only given a phone number so they can call Dish to voice their concerns directly, but visitors can also punch in their zip code to learn about alternative pay TV service providers in their area.

Of course, AMC didn’t invent this part of the playbook — Fox Networks employed the same strategy with its FX channel last year, with series producers including profane Sons of Anarchy creator Kurt Sutter appearing in interstitials that urged fans of the show to harang DirecTV.

So far, Vince Gilligan, creator of AMC’s crystal-meth-themed hit Breaking Bad, and Matt Weiner, mastermind of its 1960s Madison Avenue  period drama Mad Men, haven’t taped any PSAs of their own.

With Dish Network playing hardball in a way DirecTV never did — FX never came close to be cast off into the quadruple digits, after all  – who knows if Gilligan or Weiner could even help at this point?

Dish’s carriage accounts for around 15 percent of AMC’s base of nearly 96 million homes. And AMC is trying to triple carriage fees that average around 25 cents per subscriber.

With a flurry of new regional sports networks to pay for, Dish has openly said it isn’t too excited about shelling out more for AMC programs that cater to an upscale urban audience for a subscriber base that it says is predominantly rural.

For its part, AMC continues to insist the dispute is less about money than litigation over an unrelated matter — a five-year-old case involving now-defunct HD programming service Voom Networks. That service was owned by AMC’s previous corporate iteration, Rainbow Media, and Dish pulled it off its grid in 2008 claiming it wasn’t drawing enough viewers.

AMC’s $2.5 billion breach-of-contract complaint over the matter is set to go to trial in September, an outcome Dish would like to avoid.

With the satellite TV bundler already grabbing headlines over an especially pungent carriage dispute with AMC  Networks, Sanford Bernstein senior analyst Craig Moffett took Dish to task Thursday for implementing a series of new ad-skipping features into its new “Hopper” digital video recorders.

In fact, noting that Dish is ironically introducing these features at a time when its threatening to keep AMC’s ad-industry focused hit drama Mad Men away from its 14 million viewers,  Moffett pungently titled his report, “It’s not just Mad Men … Dish hates all advertising.”

On Thursday, Dish sent out a press release unveiling its new ad-skipping features: “The new ‘Auto Hop’ capability for the Hopper whole-home HD DVR system is being activated today, and it allows customers to skip all commercials for most recorded primetime HD programs shown on ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC when viewed the day after airing,” the company said.

Noted Dish product management VP Vivek Khemka: “Viewers love to skip commercials. With the Auto Hop capability of the Hopper, watching your favorite shows commercial-free is easier than ever before. It’s a revolutionary development that no other company offers, and it’s something that sets Hopper above the competition.”

Moffett, however, is apparently not in the consumer group Khemka is talking about.

“It’s hard to maintain good affiliate relations when you introduce a service designed to cut out the bulk of your affiliates’ revenues,” Moffett wrote. “Auto Hop adds to an already long list of broadcast-unfriendly features of Dish’s service, including 30 second skip buttons on their remote controls…”

Going back more than a decade in terms of media technology litigation, Moffett noted that early DVR pioneer ReplayTV introduced similar functionality in the late 1990s, and the resulting litigation brought against it by broadcasters ultimately led the company into bankruptcy.

“And all this comes at a time when Dish (amid ongoing litigation with AMC Networks) is taking a hard line on programming costs by preemptively announcing its intention not to renew its carriage agreement with AMC, home to the wildly popular Mad Men (which, ironically, is about … advertising),” Moffett added.

This AMC thing really could be nasty …

With ratings for AMC shows including Mad Men and The Walking Dead way up, AMC Networks on Thursday reported a 20 percent uptick in first-quarter revenue to $326.2 million. However, AMC Networks CEO Josh Sapan warned investors of a significant “material effect” should Dish remove the company’s channels — which include AMC, IFC, Sundance Channel and WeTV — once the current carriage agreement expires on June 30.

“You should be aware that the loss of the affiliate fee and advertising revenue that comes from the carriage by Dish of our national networks may have a material impact on our financial results,” Sapan said.

While the vast majority of carriage disputes between programming suppliers and multi-channel operators have been settled before popular shows were pulled off the air, this particular impasse is compounded by litigation.

A New York appellate court last week ruled that Dish destroyed electronic evidence in a four-year-old case involving defunct service Voom HD. AMC Networks sued Dish for $2.5 billion for terminating its carriage of those channels, and the court has ruled that case can go to trial.

Meanwhile, as AMC tries to as much as triple its carriage fee for AMC — reported to be around 25 cents per subscriber — as well as secure carriage for lightly watched channels such as WeTV, Dish executives are quietly noting that their largely rural subscriber base is not hugely passionate about urban-centered, upscale-skewing shows like Mad Men.

In short, this carriage fight has the potential to drag on for a while. Stay tuned.

More details about the arrangement are forthcoming, but in a press release, Kwatinetz and Frank said that outstanding programming is the best way to attract audiences online: “We believe that by continuing to produce the shows in their current hour format and with the same quality, viewers will follow the show to our new, online network.”

ABC is airing its final episode of All My Children on September 23, and its final episode of One Life to Live in January. Prospect Park is picking up the soaps at a time when ABC is turning away from them: All My Children is being replaced by a food-focused daily talk show called The Chew, and One Life to Live is being replaced by a health and lifestyle show, The Revolution. And ABC parent company Disney transitioned its rerun-centered SOAPnet channel from cable to online last year, replacing it with Disney Junior.

Agnes Nixon, creator of both All My Children and One Life to Live, said, “I’m looking forward to working alongside these wonderful people as we ensure that the shows will continue with all the love and excitement we’ve always had.” But in addition to the other variables at play here, it is also unclear whether all of the shows’ current actors will continue. Some already have new arrangements — and others may have ego issues.