Don’t look now, media business drama lovers, but it’s blackout season, with the prospect of missed college and pro football games presenting a natural incentivizer to get carriage and retrans deals done. 

Early out of the gate is a regional kerfuffle in Central Oregon, with BendBroadband-owned CBS affiliate KBNZ and ABC affiliate KOHD blacked out on Dish Network since last week. 

“Despite our good faith efforts, Dish Network dropped your local ABC and CBS stations,” said the stations’ joint local news platform, Central Oregon Daily News, in a statement posted on July 26. Dish subscribers are directed on the page to access the channels via “off-air antenna,” or through competing local pay TV providers DirecTV or TDS Telecom.

BendBroadband purchased the stations back in 2013 through its Zolo Media unit. 

And it’s certainly not the first time these stations have been blacked out on Dish Network, as this 2010 retrans battle shows. 

BendBroadband has recently applied changes to its usage-based broadband policies that favor high-speed Internet customers that also bundle in the MSO’s TV service.

Under the new plan, described in this May 9 blog post that was spotted by DSL Reports, customers who take BendBroadand’s “Bronze” or above Intent speed tiers and bundle in its “Essentials” or above TV service are exempt from the MSO’s usage-based broadband policy.

“More than half of BendBroadband’s internet customers are no longer subject to a monthly data usage allowance under a new initiative that goes into effect today,” explained the Oregon-based MSO, which was acquired by TDS Telecom in 2014.

Non-exempt customers, a group that likely includes cord-cutters that rely heavily on broadband for their video consumption, are still subject to a BendBroadband usage policy that charges $10 for an additional 50 Gigabytes of data above the customer’s monthly limit.

For example, under BendBroadband new “Ultra”-branded set of packages, Ultra 50 package (50 Mbps down by 3 Mbps upstream) sets a monthly data usage ceiling of 250 GB; 500 GB for Ultra 100 (100 Mbps down by 5 Mbps up); and 750 GB for Ultra 300 (300 Mbps down by 10 Mbps up).

The policy shift at BendBroadband comes against the backdrop of an FCC order and condition placed on the Charter-Time Warner Cable merger that bars New Charter fromimposing data caps and usage-based data pricing for a period of seven years.

AT&T, meanwhile, has added an unlimited data plan that cost an extra $30 per month for standalone Internet subs, but is free to broadband subs who bundled with U-verse video or co-owned DirecTV satellite video service and pay on a single bill.

Comcast announced last month that it is moving to a terabyte data plan in all of its usage-based test markets starting June 1.  Customers who go over that 1 TB monthly limit can buy additional buckets of 50 GB of data for $10 each, or move to a new unlimited data plan that runs an additional $50 per month.

TDS Telecom, a unit of Telephone and Data Systems, said it closed its previously announced purchase of BendBroadband in Oregon for $261 million. This represents TDS's second cable operations buy, having also purchased Baja Broadband, a New Mexico-based cable firm operating in Colorado, New Mexico, Texas and Utah, for $267.7 million. TDS said it will manage the acquired BendBroadband businesses, which also include The Vault, a data center operation, and Zolo Media, which manages and sells advertising on three Oregon TV stations and cable networks in the state. TDS's OneNeck It Solutions plans to integrate The Vault into its data-center portfolio.

"Our success will be fueled by a geographic region that is exploding with business growth and residential development. It's the hot spot of Central Oregon," TDS Telecom CEO David A. Wittwer said in a release. "I believe the BendBroadband businesses have significant potential to deliver increased returns over time and the team of talented employees in Bend will help us expand our cable operations and expertise in other states as well."

Previously it was reported that BendBroadband had about 36,000 video customers, 41,000 high-speed data subscribers and 22,000 digital telephony customers in Central Oregon. It had  2013 revenue of $70 million and nearly 300 employees, who have now joined TDS Telecom.