User blog comment:JERealize/JER's Fanon Timeline/@comment-1874924-20120918022956/@comment-1874924-20120919032811

Once a distribution agreement between a studio and a network lapses, it's dead. Although it can be extended by mutual consent whilst the parties hammer out a new agreement, neither party can enforce a lapsed contract against the other's will, because there's no longer anything to enforce. Furthermore, in most cases either party can terminate the agreement at any time, which is why shows with poor ratings can be cancelled after only a few episodes (often leaving some episodes unaired). In addition, exclusivity is rare. It's quite normal for a studio to produce show A for one network and show B for another network.

It's rather like subscribing to a cellphone service. Although there may be a financial penalty if you switch providers before a certain period has ended, your current provider can't stop you switching if you're willing to pay that penalty; and once the commitment period passes, you can switch at any time and with no penalty for any reason or for none. And if your original provider came back after a year or two and demanded that you switch back to them (which is essentially the scenario you describe), you would probably laugh in their faces.

Although it's not common, TV shows do occasionally move from one network to another. The distribution agreements probably forbid switching in the middle of a season, which the studio probably wouldn't want to do anyway, so such switches are made between seasons.

In any case, if Teletoon (for example) actually had some legal grounds for objecting to the studio reviving a cancelled show for another network (CN, for example), Teletoon would sue the studio, not CN, because Teletoon and CN never had any enforceable agreement with each other. If Teletoon somehow won, then one of two things would happen: either they would get monetary damages and the show would remain with CN; or they would get the show back and the studio might have to pay damages to CN for prematurely breaking the agreement. CN wouldn't have any obligation to Teletoon in either case.

Note also that any lawsuit could only occur in a country where both Teletoon and CN air programming. For example, if Teletoon only operates in Canada (and for the record, I don't know if that's the case), then they would have no legal standing to sue for anything that CN did anywhere except in Canada. Likewise, Teletoon would not normally have (nor want, in all likelihood) any say in how the studio distributed its shows in markets where Teletoon has no presence.