The owned and operated broadcast television stations of CBS are currently being aired on Dish Network thanks to a pair of deadline extensions as the parties negotiate a new retransmission consent agreement.
CBS stations are located in 14 large markets.
According to CBS, after six months of negotiating, there will be no further extensions. If no agreement is reached by 7PM eastern 12/4/14, the stations will go dark on the Dish platform.
Dish says that only CBS has the power to remove the programming.
RBR-TVBR observation: The basic story is this:
Despite the massive changes in viewing patterns over the years, the fact remains that broadcast television brings in by far the most viewers to the benefit of the MVPDs that carry them.
How does it benefit MVPDs? If a distributor like Dish decides it won’t carry CBS, a large number of viewers in any given market will decide not to subscribe to Dish.
Historically, broadcasters have received far below market value for their programming. During this decade, the price has been catching up to the value.
Most MVPDs have accepted this reality and negotiate a fair price. Three have not accepted it and are responsible for the vast majority of service interruptions, and Dish is one of them, along with DirecTV and Time Warner Cable.
Dish may decide to refuse to pay the new market rate for broadcast, but it cannot expect to get the programming anyway.
Sometimes impasses are reached by different players, as is happening with Cox and Verizon FiOS in Boston, but most of the time, new contracts are reached quietly and with no program disruptions.
When they do happen, it could be just about any television broadcaster on one side of the issue, but on the other side it is usually one of the three previously mentioned. That should tell you something.
