The matter involves an entity owned and operated by Webb Collums, who has a strong family history in media in southwest Mississippi and is currently invested in the Mississippi Delta region. And, it first earned national attention six weeks ago when a pro-MVPD lobbying group made it known that his FOX and MyNetworkTV stations in Central New York could be pulled from Verizon FiOs lineups over a budding retransmission consent disagreement.
An impasse has transpired, and the American Television Alliance (ATVA) condemned the action, blaming Deltavision Media.
In the ATVA’s view, the company “pulled” WSYT-TV and WNYS-TV in Syracuse from Verizon FiOs local channel lineups in the Syracuse-Ithaca DMA, “leaving thousands of consumers unable to access essential local news, weather and entertainment.”
In truth, the stations were blocked, by law, from Verizon FiOs customers because the two parties could not agree on a carriage agreement that involved fair compensation for the two stations.
Don’t tell that to ATVA spokesman Hunter Wilson, who blasted Deltavision Media for “benching nearly 20,000 consumers to demand an unprecedented retrans rate hike.”
Speaking on behalf of Verizon FiOs, a frequent party in retrans fee disputes leading to “blackouts,” the ATVA says the rates Deltavision seeks are “one of the steepest Verizon has ever seen.”
It does not share if the rates paid by previous ownership were significantly lower than those paid by Nexstar Media Group’s WSYR-9, the dominant station in the market, or Sinclair Inc.’s WSTM-3 and its shared services partner WTVM-5.
Ranked No. 88, the Syracuse DMA is home to 387,030 television households, illustrating how Verizon FiOs captures less than 5.5% of total TV households in Central New York.
While the ATVA “stands ready to work with Congress to modernize dated regulations that turn sizable profits for broadcasters at the expense of consumers,” it continues to point fingers at TV station owners as the lone party creating impasses.
Deltavision Media in August 2025 completed its acquisition of WSYT-TV in Syracuse from INSP-aligned Imagicomm Communications.
