SAN LUIS OBISPO, CALIF. — And just like that, the local NBC affiliate serving viewers from Santa Barbara to Paso Robles — and every other station owned by The E.W. Scripps Co. — is headed back to DirecTV channel lineups across the U.S.
That’s because another bitter re-transmission consent dispute has just ended.
DirecTV announced just before 5pm Pacific that it agreed to a new multi-year agreement with Scripps.
The fresh accord will return 54 local broadcast stations owned and operated by Scripps to DIRECTV streaming, satellite, and U-verse customers “immediately.”
The agreement ends a five-week blackout affecting millions of customers across 36 Nielsen DMAs, including Baltimore, Buffalo, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Denver, Detroit, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Milwaukee, Nashville, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, Tampa-St. Petersburg, West Palm Beach and other locales.
A statement from Scripps was not immediately available as of 5pm Pacific. That said, the direct broadcast satellite provider had plenty to say about the new deal.
“We’re grateful to our customers for their patience,” said Rob Thun, chief content officer at DIRECTV. “Like them, we are frustrated that broadcasters use blackouts as a tool to force us to accept unwarranted rate hikes that consistently exceed normal, inflationary increases, and by a lot. At a time when affordability matters more than ever, families are too often asked to pay more while receiving less.
“Local broadcasters were entrusted with serving their communities through local news, weather, emergency information, and hometown sports,” Thun added. “But as ownership becomes concentrated among a handful of ever-larger broadcasters gaining stations across new and within their existing markets, those expanded stations become increasingly powerful and further unbalanced negotiating tools. The more markets and major network affiliations a broadcaster controls, the greater its ability to withhold programming from the very communities it is meant to serve.
“Consumers should never lose access to essential local television because of a carriage dispute. It’s time to modernize the system so it rewards service to local communities—and not consolidated market power—by returning to the original purpose of broadcasting of putting viewers’ interests first,” Thun concluded.
