A dispute between DirecTV and broadcasting giant Tegna Inc. over carriage rights could lead to a blackout of 68 local affiliates beginning Thursday.
CordCuttersNews.com reported Wednesday that Tegna is warning viewers it might pull 68 local ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC affiliates from DirecTV, DirecTV Stream and AT&T U-Verse on Nov. 30 if a new carriage deal is not reached.
While sports fans are already worried about missing critical college football and NFL matchups this weekend, any possible outage could last much longer: The last carriage rights dispute involving DirecTV resulted in 159 of Nexstar Media Group’s local affiliates in 113 markets blacked out for 75 days beginning in July.
In a statement to TheWrap.com, a Tegna spokesperson said the company is “working hard to reach a fair, market-based agreement” with DirecTV. “Thus far, DIRECTV has refused to agree to such terms …”
DirecTV responded by posting a message on its website blaming Tegna for making the negotiations public.
“TEGNA Inc. … has once again made a private negotiation public to create unnecessary and premature concern among some of our customers to extract higher rates for local broadcast stations,” the statement reads. “Unfortunately, that’s become the industry norm as the costs for free local stations have soared more than 20 percent yearly despite declining popularity and less compelling content.
“We will do our utmost to shield [our customers] from unwarranted price hikes as we work with TEGNA Inc. to renew its stations without interruption.”
Tegna also engaged in a four-month carriage dispute with Dish TV in early 2022 that got resolved just in time for viewers of affected NBC affiliates to watch Super Bowl LVI and the Winter Olympics.
