From Portland, Ore., and Tampa, Fla., to Buffalo, N.Y. and the Nation’s Capital, viewers of television stations owned by the company formerly known as Gannett are being warned that, if they are DirecTV subscribers, they could lose access to the channels as soon as late Thursday evening.
The direct broadcast satellite company is already speaking out about the potential retransmission consent dispute.
With crawl screen messages seen on stations including WTSP-10 in Tampa-St. Petersburg and WUSA9 in Washington, D.C., on Sunday and a banner appearing on their station websites indicating “a special message” for those who watch via DirecTV, TEGNA is warning of a loss of access to their stations if a deal is not reached by November 30.
The retransmission consent negotiations also involve AT&T U-Verse.
Viewers of the TEGNA stations visiting their websites are routed to “keepmylocaltv.com,” with variants for each station based on their network affiliation. For example, KGW-8 viewers in Portland, Ore., are shown a microsite highlighting how Sunday Night Football, The Voice and Saturday Night Live are at stake. In Sacramento, KXTV “ABC10” began running crawl screen messages warning of the November 30 expiry date of the current retransmission consent agreement on Saturday morning. The timing was designed to reach college football game-day viewers.
In a statement provided Monday afternoon to RBR+TVBR, a TEGNA spokesperson said, “We are working hard to reach a fair, market-based agreement with DirecTV based on the competitive terms we’ve used to reach previous deals with DirecTV and other major providers. Thus far, DirecTV has refused to agree to such terms, which is why we have begun informing DirecTV and AT&T U-Verse customers that they may lose access to their local TEGNA station and our valuable programming. We hope that DirecTV is willing to negotiate a market-based deal before the November 30 deadline and doesn’t take away DirecTV and AT&T U-Verse customers’ local news, weather, sports and network programs.”
What does DirecTV have to say about the potential “blackout,” by law, it must undertake should a fresh retrans deal with TEGNA not be signed by the end of the day Thursday?
As is typical in these negotiations, each side is blaming one another. While TEGNA has signaled that DirecTV is the party responsible for possibly “taking away” their channels from customers, the direct broadcast satellite provider blames the TV station owner for seeking an unfair compensation value for the right of DirecTV to profit from the carriage of the signals owned by broadcast TV companies such as TEGNA.
In a statement provided to RBR+TVBR, a DirecTV spokesperson said, “TEGNA has once again made a private negotiation public in the hopes of creating unnecessary and premature concern among some of our customers to extract higher rates for local broadcast stations. Unfortunately, that’s become the industry norm as the costs for free local stations have soared more than 20% year upon year upon year despite declining popularity and less-compelling content. We will continue to meet our customers’ demands for greater choice and value and do our utmost to shield them from unwarranted price hikes as we work with TEGNA to renew its stations without any interruption.”
TEGNA owns and operates 68 stations, with 21 stations affiliated with NBC and 16 with CBS. Each of the stations, DirecTV points out, stream their local news product while network content can be seen via Peacock or Paramount+.
Direct TV customers since 1994 I believe. We haven’t been pressured into switching to another service because we’ve always enjoyed direct TV service but if this happens we will be forced to move on and we really don’t want to do that so please direct TV negotiate this!!
In the past I have dealt with Direct TV not having the PAC12 network. I could live with that. However, if this stalemate persists and I lose our local channel of KPNX…I will find another provider. This situation can be and should be negotiated into a reasonable solution for both sides, but most importantly for the people who have Direct TV.
Need my local channels to stay so I can continue to get my programs. Need NBC and all the others you have taken off.
Typical Directv. This is constantly happening with them and I’m sick of this game playing. Fix it or I’ll finally move on from overpaying them like I’ve should’ve done long ago..
There has to be some grown up solution to this constant back and forth situation between CBS and Direct TV.
It seems we go through this periodically and in the meantime the customers get caught in the middle of this child like school yard fight. We need our local channel 11 and Direct TV to stop playing games and Direct TV needs to stop constantly raising prices on their customers for its poor services. Its like the constant ridiculous fighting between the Republicans and Democrats..grow up and stop screwing the consumers
We have been customers of Directv for many decades. The finale of The Voice and the Paris Summer Olympics will be starting soon. I like the home news of WKYC channel 3 here in Cleveland, Ohio. Please negotiate to return this tv station to Cleveland area for us. Thank you.
I have been a loyal customer since 2003. We just went thru this long process with our local ABC all last summer. We get no rebate even tho we are paying for this local. Our prices keep going up and up. Us people on a fixed income of social security enjoy TV but cannot keep paying these charges and then have our favorite shows taken off. This is shameful!!!!
Fed up with these greedy feuds that leave consumers caught in the middle. Will move on from DIRECTV and won’t watch WUSA9 in DC ever again. Everyone else impacted should do the same, let’s make it hurt for these two behemoths and see how they like it.
Tegna is reporting net income +32 percent and net profit margin +21 percent YOY 2021 to 2022. IT’S TEGNA.!!!!!
If this dispute continues, we will leave Direct TV also. This is major bad publicity for Direct TV for their current customers as well as future ones. We have had it!!!
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