Covington & Burling LLP operates as a limited liability partnership worldwide, with the practice in England and Wales conducted by an affiliated
limited liability multinational partnership, Covington & Burling LLP, which is formed under the laws of the State of Delaware in the United States
and authorized and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority with registration number 77071..
Robyn Polashuk is co-chair of the firm's Entertainment and Media Industry Group. She focuses her practice on the licensing and distribution of television networks and programming content across a variety of platforms, including cable and satellite, IPTV, mobile, and Internet streaming. These transactions span the business models available to consumers, such as subscription linear, ad-supported, subscription and transactional video-on-demand, electronic sell-through, and interactive applications. As part of this work, she also negotiates retransmission consent agreements on behalf of broadcast stations.
Robyn has extensive experience in digital distribution in the areas of “over the top” (OTT), TV Everywhere (TVE), and direct-to-consumer (DTC) structures. She handles a variety of agreements in this space, including traditional network and program distribution, premium subscription content licenses, app placement, revenue sharing, dynamic ad insertion arrangements, as well as content licensing for metaverse platforms. Robyn’s practice also extends to due diligence and contractual analysis in connection with media-related corporate transactions, most favored nations review and interpretation, and guidance for distribution-related disputes and litigation. Robyn works closely with Covington’s tech transactions, litigation and regulatory attorneys to provide multi-faceted support for programming clients’ distribution businesses.
In this practice, Robyn represents leading media groups, film and television studios, sports leagues and emerging networks, in general entertainment, national and regional sports and specialized programming genres, as well as both major and emerging technology, and Internet companies. These include AMC Networks, The Walt Disney Company, Paramount Global, NFL Network, Ovation, Pac-12 Networks, PBS, TV One, and TelevisaUnivision.
She has negotiated on behalf of content owners with all the traditional television distributors, such as DIRECTV, Charter/Spectrum, Comcast, DISH Network and Verizon, as well as streaming distributors and platforms, such as DIRECTV Stream, FuboTV, Roku, Sling TV, Twitter, YouTube TV and Xumo.
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