Ten million DirecTV subscribers around the country lost access to 159 Nexstar local TV stations and Nexstar’s NewsNation cable channel at 7 p.m. on July 2 after the pay TV operator and the station group were unable to reach a new retransmission consent deal.
The disruption in service affects DirecTV, Uverse and DirecTV Stream subscribers.
Nexstar said that DirecTV rejected Nexstar’s offer to extend the current agreement to October 31.
DirecTV responded by contending that Nexstar was asking more than double the fees DirecTV currently pays.
“Nexstar has a long track record of forcing programming outages in an effort to unnecessarily raise prices for everyone at the expense of the communities they are licensed and entrusted to serve," said Rob Thun, chief content officer of DirecTV. “We will continue to work with Nexstar to reach an agreement and will take all necessary actions to provide our customers access to their favorite programming while protecting them from unwarranted price increases.”
In a press release, Nexstar responded by saying: “Nexstar has been negotiating tirelessly and in good faith in an attempt to reach a mutually agreeable multi-year contract with DirecTV since May, offering the same fair market rates it offered to other distribution partners with whom it completed successful negotiations in the past year. Nexstar routinely reaches amicable retransmission and carriage agreements with its cable, satellite, and telco partners—in the last three years alone, the company has successfully completed agreements with more than 500 distribution partners.”
“Following DirecTV’s actions, subscribers in 113 Nexstar markets including Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Denver, have lost access to thousands of hours of vitally important local news, just as the summer storm season is raging,” Nexstar added.
The blackout widens an already bitter legal and regulatory spat between DirecTV and Nexstar. On Friday June 30 as the deadline for concluding a new retransmission agreement loomed, both sides traded barbs, accusing each other of not negotiating in good faith and of making unfair demands.
DirecTV also has an ongoing carriage dispute with Mission Broadcasting and White Knight that has kept stations from Mission and White Knight off DirecTV since October.
DirecTV filed a March legal suit against Nexstar and the other broadcasters, complaining that Nexstar has prevented the completion of a fair deal because it controls retransmission negotiations for Mission and White Knight. Nexstar has denied it has any involvement in those negotiations.
In the runup to the blackout, DirecTV also filed an "informal complaint" with the FCC on June 30 alleging that Nexstar continues to violate media ownership and other rules by having de facto control over stations owned by Mission Broadcasting and White Knight, including in 25 markets where Nexstar also owns a top 4 local broadcaster.
The June 30 FCC filing is available here.
The dispute also comes at a time when summer viewing is traditionally down, a factor that could prolong the dispute, and pay TV operators are faced with massive cord cutting that makes it difficult to raise prices.
