Credit: Rodney Ho
Credit: Rodney Ho
By RODNEY HO/ rho@ajc.com, originally filed Saturday October 10, 2015, updated Sunday, October 11, 2015
Dish Network lost access to WXIA-TV, the NBC affiliate also known as 11 Alive, and sister station WATL-TV late Friday night over a fee dispute.
UPDATE: The two sides reached an agreement early afternoon Sunday. So the blackout ended up lasting less than 48 hours.
Tegna, formerly known as Gannett, has cut off 42 television stations in 38 markets. 11 Alive airs everything from the "Today" show to "Dr. Phil" to "The Blacklist" and "The Voice." And Dish subscribers in the Atlanta metro area wanting to see tonight's new episode of "Saturday Night Live" hosted by Amy Schumer will be out of luck unless the two sides come to an agreement before 11:29 p.m.
Subscribers of Dish who wanted to see the "Dateline" special last night featuring 27 Bill Cosby accusers were locked out.
Dish has about 14 million subscribers nationwide but doesn't break them down by market.
This is the just latest battle between content carriers and content providers are battling over fees that play into the prices you pay each month. And as subscriber numbers have been shrinking in the face of cord cutting and Millenials who never subscribed at all, the disputes have become more common in recent years, though the two sides dispute on what constitutes a "blackout."
This year, the American Television Alliance, an advocacy group that represents cable and satellite companies, said there have been 183 blackouts, which appears to represent every individual market impacted. TVFreedom, which represents broadcasters, say it's more like 15 specific disputes in 2015.
The last time Atlanta has had a new fee dispute that caused a month-long blackout was late last year between Dish and some Turner channels such as Cartoon Network and CNN.
Dish TV has also chosen not to air weekend Atlanta Braves game for three seasons, a dispute that is one of the longest I've ever seen.
Both sides tried to explain their case in separate statements. Dish argued that Tegna could have kept negotiating without pulling its channels. Tegna simply said Dish is the side causing the problems and noted that they are "serial dropper of channels."
"With Dish willing to grant an extension and a retroactive true-up on rates, Tegna had nothing to lose and consumers had everything to gain by leaving the channels up," Warren Schlichting, Dish senior VP of programming, said in a statement. "Instead, Tegna chose to turn its back on its public interest obligations and use innocent consumers as bargaining chips."
Here's Tegna's statement:
"TEGNA has worked hard over the course of months to reach a deal with DISH. Our position has been simple: the same fundamental terms that allowed us to reach deals with distributors nationwide should serve as the basis for our deal with DISH. Rather than accepting that fair, market-based approach, DISH has refused to reach an agreement and once again is preventing its customers from accessing valued channels, even as customers continue to pay for that content. Despite DISH's repeated efforts to blame programmers, the record is crystal clear – DISH is a serial dropper of channels. It has been responsible for the largest broadcast blackout in history and routinely drops valued cable and broadcast channels. TEGNA, on the other hand, has never been in this position before because we have always been able to reach fair agreements with distributors without disrupting our viewers."
Credit: Rodney Ho
Credit: Rodney Ho
This dispute might last a day or a month. It's impossible to say.
Notably, Dish tends to be the best provider on price alone, according to third-party studies. But DirecTV is superior with HD and sports. And cable is more reliable.
According to the Chicago Tribune: "In August, about 5 million satellite-TV customers were left without local channels when Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. temporarily withheld its content from Dish Network Corp. subscribers during contract talks. The signal was restored [within a day] after the FCC intervened. Time Warner Cable Inc. went a month in 2013 without CBS programming during a fee dispute, and lost customers in the process."
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