With the college football and the NFL seasons hitting high gear, that can only mean one thing: another potential affiliate blackout.
This time the feud is between Tegna and DirecTV, whose retrans contract expires Nov. 30. This weekend, Tegna—which owns 64 network affiliates in 14 markets—started running crawls warning subscribers to DirecTV satellite, DirecTV Stream and U-Verse that Tegna stations could soon be pulled from the satellite/streaming service.
In typical fashion, both sides issued statements accusing the other of being the Scrooge:
"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," Tegna said in a statement. "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."
DirecTV responded that “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 percent 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.”
(Read: Tegna: Merger Agreement with Standard General Is Terminated)
If Tegna follows through, DirecTV subscribers have several options: free over-the-air antenna, or accessing 21 of Tegna’s NBC affiliates on Peacock or 16 of Tegna’s CBS affiliates on Paramount Plus.
