By Joe Flint and Thomas Gryta 

While AT&T Inc. waits to close its acquisition of satellite-television operator DirecTV, AT&T's own pay-TV unit U-Verse has some unfinished business with CBS Corp.

The current U-Verse programming agreement for CBS and its cable channels, including Showtime, expires on June 30. The looming contract dispute is also raising questions about the future of the pay-TV distributor after AT&T closes its acquisition of satellite broadcaster DirecTV.

CBS is frustrated at what they see as lack of interest from AT&T to move discussions past a preliminary stage and expects customers will lose access to its channels, according to people familiar with the company's thinking. The bigger concern at CBS is that the lack of interest is a precursor to shutting U-Verse down and thus removing a pay-TV service from the market, the people said.

A person close to AT&T countered that the two sides are "knee deep" in negotiations and an agreement is expected to be reached before the end of the month. To be sure, negotiations between programmers and distributors often don't heat up until a contract is on the verge of expiration, and griping about the pace of the talks is often seen as part of the game.

If the CBS-owned television stations go dark on U-Verse, about 2.5 million subscribers would lose programming, with Dallas, Los Angeles and Chicago as the largest markets affected. Another several million U-Verse subscribers would lose Showtime.

When AT&T unveiled its plans to acquire DirecTV, one of the reasons it cited was the ability to use the satellite broadcaster's heft to lower the combined company's programming costs. DirecTV has over 20 million subscribers and U-Verse has six million.

AT&T has been aiming to close its $49 billion acquisition of DirecTV by the end of this month. At the time the merger was announced, much of the industry wondered instead whether AT&T would close U-Verse and try to move its subscribers to the DirecTV platform.

AT&T has indicated it has no such plans. On a call about the deal in May 2014, Chief Executive Randall Stephenson told analysts he didn't see DirecTV "displacing our fiber-fed video product in our U-Verse footprint."

If AT&T were planning to close U-Verse, as CBS fears, the telecom company might have less incentive to renew a carriage deal with a channel owner such as CBS. AT&T would still have rights to carry CBS on DirecTV's satellite service for several more years, under the companies' existing contract.

Even without the questions surrounding U-Verse's future, the negotiations with CBS have been complex. Discussions over a new contract started earlier this year but petered out; then, in March, AT&T's request for an extension of the June 30 deadline was denied, according to people close to CBS. The talks hit another bump in April when Aaron Slator, who handled content deals for U-Verse, was fired after he was named in a racial discrimination lawsuit by a colleague.

If CBS and U-Verse don't reach a new agreement before the merger being completed, then negotiations could switch to being overseen by DirecTV's team, who would then not only have the knowledge of their agreement with CBS but also the details of a one-time competitor's contract.

Write to Joe Flint at joe.flint@wsj.com and Thomas Gryta at thomas.gryta@wsj.com

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