In what is obviously a bit of bad news for WWE and what is a developing story, NBCUniversal are said to be at odds with Charter Communications over the renewal of rights fees for carrying NBCUniversal broadcast and cable networks such as the USA Network (which carries WWE RAW and WWE SmackDown Live) and E! (which carries Total Divas and Total Bellas).
For those wondering, Charter Communications owns Spectrum who are a new brand name that includes the former Time-Warner Cable Brighthouse Network cable providers (who Charter Communications purchased in 2014). Spectrum are the second largest cable company in the United States with a subscriber base in the 25-30 million area. The current deal between both sides, according to a report from Variety, is due to expire on January 1st, 2017 and if the channels are pulled, would be a NBCUniversal decision made to help leverage a new deal and would mean that with the USA Network and E!, viewers would also see networks including NBC, SyFy, Cloo, CNBC, MSNBC, Bravo, Oxygen and more leaving for the forseeable future.
NBCUniversal have been airing warnings on programming warning Spectrum/Charter customers that they could conceivable lose the stations on January 1st, 2017 if a new deal is not made, pushing the customers to request that Charter/Spectrum get the deal over the line before then.