After a year of tough negotiations and numerous retransmission co...

After a year of tough negotiations and numerous retransmission consent extensions, Comcast and Disney announced Fri. agreement in principle on carriage of over-the-air signals of ABC owned stations in MSO’s markets. Spokeswomen for companies declined to divulge terms of agreement, citing confidentiality. Agreement covers Disney products and services including ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN Classic, ESPN News, Disney Channel, Toon Disney, SoapNet and retransmission consent for ABC-owned stations in Philadelphia, N.Y., L.A., Chicago, Flint, Mich., and Toledo, Ohio. Current ESPN and Disney Channel programming agreements were set to expire Dec. 31, 2000. Latest in series of retransmission consent extensions was also due to expire Dec. 31 (CD Dec 7 p9). Characterizing agreement as “important” one, Disney Pres. Robert Iger said it’s “clearly in the best interests of our viewers on all the Comcast systems.”