This will not help with the Dish-MSG dispute. Even though they had carriage agreements in place with Verizon, MSG (Cablevision) was withholding their HD signal only from retransmission by select (non-cable) providers. Dish and MSG dont have even a basic retransmission agreement in place after it expired last October 1. Even the Sabres are taking a hands-off approach to the negotiations between MSG and Dish. Ted Black addressed it in a recent online chat saying basically go find another provider. WGRZ-TV also reported on Friday that there had been no progress in negotiations and did not get a response from Dish when asked status. MSG gave the stock, "we are trying to negotiate a fair price for our services and are willing to go to arbitration" answer to the same inquiry.
Don't hold your breath...it's going to be another long season without Sabres hockey (along with the Rangers, Islanders, Devils and Knicks) on Dish Network. My bet is FCC wont get involved in this one.