Sinclair, Charter agree to a new carriage deal

After kicking the can down the road with short-term deals in order to avoid a potential outage, Sinclair Broadcast Group and Charter Communications have announced an agreement to keep Sinclair stations on TV for Spectrum subscribers.

Specific details weren’t provided in the press release but the deal applies to Sinclair’s local affiliates, their Bally Sports RSN’s, Tennis Channel, Marquee Sports Network, and YES Network.

This agreement came on the heels of two short-term extensions over the past six weeks that avoided any disruption for Spectrum subscribers. The first short-term extension took place on March 1 as the original deal from 2019 expired. A month later, the two sides agreed to another extension.

Those extensions might be a bit frustrating for subscribers because it doesn’t totally escape the possibility of an outage but by enacting short-term extensions, that can also be a sign that both sides are still on good terms to eventually come up with a deal. Case in point, a deal was made before negotiations got so bad that networks were taken off TV.

[Business Wire]