DirecTV, U-verse customers may miss matchup
Cleveland Browns and Cincinnati Bengals fans who subscribe to DirecTV or AT&T U-verse could miss the matchup between the two teams on Sunday as the blackout of WBNS-TV (Channel 10) on the pay TV services continues with no end in sight.
WBNS and its sister station WTHR-TV in Indianapolis disappeared from the DirecTV and AT&T lineups on Sept. 6 after negotiations with AT&T, which owns DirecTV and AT&T U-verse, came to an impasse over retransmission licensing fees.
By law, cable and satelliteTV companies are required to negotiate with local TV stations over payment for their broadcasts.
WBNS and WTHR last came to an agreement with DirecTV three years ago, but it expired at the end of August.
AT&T spokeswoman Holly Hollingsworth said in an email that no progress has occurred since the two stations “pulled their permission for DirecTV and U-verse to carry WBNS earlier this month, and that remains the situation today.”
The two stations, whose owner is the Dispatch Broadcast Group, are still negotiating, “but it appears AT&T/DirectTV doesn’t have the urgency to restore CBS/10TV,” said John Cardenas, president and general manager of WBNS, in an email.
“We have done big deals with other (pay-TV) providers recently, and so we know what the market is on retransmission consent deals,” he said. “We gear our negotiations toward that. As a two-station company, we are not setting the market for retransmission consent fees. We do not understand why we have been able to get deals done with other larger operators, but we cannot get this deal with ATT-DTV done.”
WBNS is not alone in having tough negotiations with AT&T that disrupted service.
Other recent carriage disputes involving DirecTV and AT&T have included: Meredith Broadcasting’s 17 stations, including stations in Phoenix, Kansas City, St. Louis, Nashville, Atlanta and Las Vegas; Capitol Broadcasting’s three stations in North Carolina; Raycom’s more than 40 stations; and American Spirit Media’s seven stations.
The Dispatch Broadcast Group is a division of The Dispatch Printing Company. That company sold The Columbus Dispatch two years ago. The Dispatch and its current owner, GateHouse Media, have no ownership stake in WBNS or anything to do with the contract issues that resulted in WBNS not appearing on DirecTV or AT&T U-Verse.