DirecTV and Scripps have reached a new multi-year agreement, ending the companies’ retransmission battle and an extended five-week blackout period affecting 54 local broadcast stations.
“We’re grateful to our customers for their patience. 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,” said Rob Thun, chief content officer at DirecTV. “At a time when affordability matters more than ever, families are too often asked to pay more while receiving less.”
The blackout affected millions of homes in Nielsen-designated markets, specifically during appointment television events including the NBA Finals, the NHL Stanley Cup Final and several matches of the FIFA World Cup. Both DirecTV and Scripps blamed one another for the blackout in May.
The multi-year agreement restores service to affected customers in Baltimore, Buffalo, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Denver, Detroit, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Milwaukee, Nashville, Phoenix, Salt Lake City and Tampa-St. Petersburg, according to DirecTV.
“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.”
The companies did not disclose financial terms of the agreement or whether the deal includes changes to how future carriage disputes will be resolved. DirecTV earlier claimed that Scripps was demanding the highest rates from any station group they worked with that would raise costs for the consumer. When DirecTV denied the higher rates, Scripps removed its stations from viewers in several major markets.
It was not clear if DirecTV avoided any rate increases through its new agreement with Scripps.
Earlier this year, Scripps-owned stations were pulled from Comcast’s Xfinity TV systems also for about five weeks before coming to an agreement in their carriage dispute.
