It happened in 2017, and again in 2023, and in each instance a two-month impasse resulted in the blocking of all Hearst Television stations to Dish subscribers.
It was highly likely to happen again, starting Wednesday evening. Thanks to savvy negotiation between the two parties, a retransmission consent fee dispute leading to a “blackout” of Hearst stations on the DBS provider was averted with minutes to spare.
The privately held licensee of broadcast TV stations began alerting viewers on Tuesday that it was negotiating a renewal of its retransmission consent agreement with Dish. It was poised to expire at 7pm Eastern on Wednesday (8/19). At 7:15pm Eastern, a company spokesperson confirmed a fresh carriage agreement had been reached.
By law, an MVPD including Dish cannot bring a broadcast station to its customers without a fresh consent agreement. As of 4pm Eastern, it was widely anticipated that Dish would engage in what the company repeatedly labels a broadcaster-triggered “blackout” of stations including WLWT-5 in Cincinnati; WJCL-22 in Savannah, Ga.; WPBF-25 in West Palm Beach; and flagship WCVB-5 in Boston.
In a message appearing on the WLWT website, Hearst shared that it has “a long history of successfully concluding carriage agreements with cable companies and other satellite distributors with no disruption of service to subscribers.”
The message is no longer available for viewing.
Hearst is the second major TV station ownership group to spar with Dish this year. A particularly bitter battle over carriage fees for Gray Media‘s broadcast television channels on one of the nation’s two direct broadcast satellite TV service providers ended on May 1, with its channels being restored just in time for the Kentucky Derby.
