DirecTV said it made a deal with EchoStar to buy EchoStar’s video businesses, including satellite-TV provider Dish TV and virtual MVPD Sling TV, for $1 plus the assumption of debt.

While both DirecTV and Dish have been losing customers to cord-cutting, combined they would have about 20 million subscribers, tops in the shrinking pay TV business. 

AT&T, which spun off DirecTV but retained 70% ownership in the satellite company, said it sold its stake to private-equity company TPG.

“DirecTV operates in a highly competitive video distribution industry,” DirecTV CEO Bill Morrow said. “With greater scale, we expect a combined DirecTV and Dish will be better able to work with programmers to realize our vision for the future of TV, which is to aggregate, curate and distribute content tailored to customers’ interests, and to be better positioned to realize operating efficiencies while creating value for customers through additional investment.”

Upon closing, DirecTV will continue to be led by Morrow and Ray Carpenter, DirecTV’s chief financial officer. The combined company will be headquartered in El Segundo, California.

The two companies have discussed various combinations over the years. 

DirecTV said it estimates that the combination of DirecTV and Dish has the potential to generate cost synergies of at least $1 billion per year. These synergies are expected to be achieved by the third anniversary of closing, assuming the closing is in late 2025.

In addition, TPG Angelo Gordon and certain of its co-investors, and DirecTV, provided $2.5 billion of financing to fully refinance Dish DBS’s November 2024 debt maturity fully.

DirecTV will become the first major pay TV distributor to take on the Chicago Sports Network, the new regional-sports-network home of Chicago's Bulls, Blackhawks and White Sox. 

The “wide-ranging satellite, streaming and IPTV licensing agreement” will deliver up to 300 NBA, NHL and MLB games to DirecTV satellite TV, DirecTV Stream and U-verse customers in "most of Illinois and Iowa, as well as parts of Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin, starting October 1, DirecTV said.

Also Read: Weigel’s Start TV Launches on DirecTV

“We have always prided ourselves on being a sports leader and intend to remain at the forefront,” DirecTV chief content officer Rob Thun said in a statement.

The Chicago Sports Network (CHSN) deal comes on the heels of DirecTV’s new hard-fought carriage renewal with Disney, which not only restored ESPN to the pay TV operator's programming grids, but will also deliver to the satellite company's users at no additional cost the DTC platform currently codenamed “ESPN Flagship” when it debuts next year. 

Also Read: Disney, DirecTV Reach Agreement To End Blackout 

As for the new Chicago Sports Channel, Bulls and White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf's media company, Stadium, bolted a longtime agreement with Comcast to launch the network. 

“This agreement establishes an immediate foundation for CHSN and aligns us with one of the foremost innovators in sports media,” Chicago Sports Network president Jason Coyle said.

Shares in Dish Network parent EchoStar climbed 7% in early Monday trading, following reports by Bloomberg that the satellite TV provider is discussing a merger with DirecTV.

It’s not the first time Dish Network-parent EchoStar has entered discussions with DirecTV, with EchoStar chairman Charlie Ergen regularly stating for years that he believes such a tie-up is “inevitable.” 

In fact, the FCC blocked a formal proposal to merge the two once in 2002, citing antitrust concerns.

But according to MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett, the waning market power of these two struggling satellite TV businesses may actually work in their favor this time.

Also Read: Dish and Sling TV Revenue Collapses, Down a Record 10% in Q2

Back in July 2021, just before AT&T spun off DirecTV into a separate entity, the pay TV company had 15.412 million remaining subscribers.

According to a DirecTV source, that number has fallen to around 11 million.

Moffett says that, in light of such unchecked subscriber losses, “it’s hard to imagine that regulators would block a deal.”

But given that there are “no synergies” between the companies’ satellite portfolios (which operate on two different conditional access technologies), a merger would likely provide very limited benefits.

“The biggest synergy would once have been to eliminate churn,” Moffett explained. “But today they each capture so few gross additions that cutting them, potentially even in half, wouldn’t amount to much.”

While DirecTV and Dish could benefit from the merging of their ground facilities and G&A, that single sector likely won’t be enough to keep the business afloat for more than a year.

"It’s hard to argue that a merger shouldn’t happen; it clearly should. Consolidation during a period of secular decline is always to be expected,” wrote Moffett. “But it would be a mistake to overestimate its importance. Adding a year or so to the expected life of satellite TV isn’t going to change the narrative for programmers, distributors, or even for satellite TV.”

DirecTV and The Walt Disney Co. said they have come to a carriage agreement in principle, ending a blackout that kept subscribers from watching ESPN and other Disney-owned channels as the football season began.

After a two-week negotiating impasse, DirecTV agreed to continue to carry all of Disney’s entertainment, sports and news programming.  The channels are being restored immediately as the two sides finalize and sign a deal.

The satellite TV company said it gained the opportunity to offer multiple genre-specific options to consumers, including sports, entertainment and kids and family packages that include linear Disney networks, as well as its streaming services, Disney Plus, Hulu and ESPN Plus.

Those streaming services will be included in select DirecTV packages.

DirecTV also has the right to distribute the ESPN flagship streaming service at no additional cost to DirecTV customers when it is available.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

“Through this first-of-its-kind collaboration, DirecTV and Disney are giving customers the ability to tailor their video experience through more flexible options,“ the companies said in a statement. “DirecTV and Disney have a long-standing history of connecting consumers to the best entertainment, and this agreement furthers that commitment by recognizing both the tremendous value of Disney’s content and the evolving preferences of DirecTV’s customers. 

“We’d like to thank all affected viewers for their patience and are pleased to restore Disney’s entire portfolio of networks in time for college football and the Emmy Awards this weekend,” the statement said.

During the blackout, DirecTV subscribers were deprived of the start of Monday Night Football and some college football games. There was also a dispute over carriage of the ABC News debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, although ABC made that event available to other networks.

Earlier this week, Charter Communications reached a deal with Warner Bros. Discovery that would give Charter’s Spectrum TV customers WBD’s streaming services, including Max, as part of their pay TV packages.

Charter has signed similar deals with Disney, TelevisaUnivision, Paramount Global and AMC Networks.

DirecTV Chief Marketing Officer Vince Torres told investors Thursday that the pay TV company is indeed losing "not an immaterial amount of customers" amid a program licensing dispute with Disney, which has seen ABC, ESPN and other Disney networks blacked out on DirecTV platforms since Sept. 1. 

Torres did, however, express confidence that DirecTV can "claw back" these subscriber losses over time. 

“The way we look at it is a short-term and long-term perspective," Torres said at a Goldman Sachs investor event. "In the short term, we were offering a very rich credit to customers that are impacted, and that may never be enough for someone who is annoyed that that they can’t watch their college football game over the weekend." 

The credit Torres referred to was the $30 DirecTV is offering customers to sign up for other MVPDs, virtual and otherwise, while it sorts out its beef with Disney. 

Will these customers really come back?

Back in July 2021, just before it spun DirecTV off in a deal with private equity, AT&T said that its pay TV company had 15.412 million remaining subscribers. The was the last time that subscriber numbers were publicly reported for DirecTV. 

A source close to the company told me Thursday that the company has around 11 million subscribers dispersed across DirecTV satellite TV, DirecTV Stream and U-verse. 

So a pay TV company that has averaged around 1.5 million lost customers a year can expect to re-acquire what it loses in this carriage war? 

Tough to imagine. 

DirecTV Stream and DirecTV via Internet subscribers will finally have access to customized user profiles, the pay TV operator said Wednesday.

After adding a new profile, users will gain access to a customizable TV experience, including the ability to bookmark their favorite shows and sports teams, on-demand purchases and receive customized homepage carousel recommendations.

Also Read: DirecTV Complains to the FCC: Disney Demand That It Drop All Legal Beefs Is 'Bad Faith' Negotiating

In addition to the primary account, users can make four additional profiles which (unlike the primary profile) can be changed or deleted at any time.

The new function was first teased back in June, when DirecTV said it would introduce user profiles “by the end of 2024.”

User profiles have been standard equipment in steaming for a decade, but DirecTV has finally caught up.

“The growing fragmentation of content across multiple apps and video services means it is increasingly more difficult for customers, especially with multiple at-home users, to find the shows and games they want,” said Devin Merrill, senior VP for product marketing for DirecTV, in a statement. 

User profiles, he added, "declutters the experience by providing users in the same household who stream DIRECTV with a personalized view of the entertainment or sports content they love all in one place.”

Capping a busy first week of public messaging since its pay TV carriage battle started with Disney, DirecTV took the fight to the FCC, filing a "good faith negotiating complaint" against the media conglomerate. 

DirecTV claims that at the 11th hour of negotiations, Disney threw a curveball, demanding it to drop any litigation related to the launch of the Disney/Fox/Warner joint venture Venu Sports.

Also read: Disney and ESPN Treat Us All Terribly, and It's a Problem

“Along with these anticompetitive demands, Disney has also insisted that DirecTV agree to a ‘clean slate’ provision and a covenant not to sue, both of which are intended to prevent DirecTV from taking legal action regarding Disney’s anticompetitive demands, which would include filing good faith complaints at the Commission. Not three months ago, however, the Media Bureau made clear that such a demand itself constitutes bad faith," DirecTV said in its FCC filing. 

Disney responded with this statement: “We continue to negotiate with DirecTV to restore access to our content as quickly as possible. We urge DirecTV to stop creating diversions and instead prioritize their customers by finalizing a deal that would allow their subscribers to watch our strong upcoming lineup of sports, news and entertainment programming, starting with the return of Monday Night Football.”

Disney channels including ESPN and ABC went dark on the nation's third largest pay TV distributor on Sept. 1. DirecTV has cast the negotiations as a referendum on pay TV's future, demanding that Disney move away from forced network bundling and capitulate to letting skinny bundles of genre-based networks happen.

For their part, it was exactly this kind of bundle that Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery were planning with Venu Sports, before an antitrust suit filed by Fubo -- and backed by DirecTV -- resulted in Venu receiving a preliminary injunction. 

With the blackout of Walt Disney Co.-owned networks keeping its subscribers from watching important college and NFL football games, DirecTV is telling subscribers to sign up for rival services.

To keep them from simply switching, DirecTV is offering its subscribers a $30 credit that will go into effect after the free trial period ends on Fubo and Sling TV.

“As the leaves turn each fall, you can be sure of two things – football season will be in full swing, and Disney will do everything it can to keep you from watching your favorite team unless they offer it to you exclusively (oh, Disney now owns all of Hulu too),” DirecTV said. “Don’t take our word for it. You can ask Spectrum customers in 2023 or YouTube TV customers in 2021.”

Disney and DirecTV failed to come to a new carriage agreement on September 1 and Disney programming, including ESPN, has been blacked out ever since.

DirecTV applauded when Fubo was able to obtain an injunction against Venu, a joint venture streaming service planned by Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery. Fubo was able to convince a federal court judge that Venu violated antitrust laws by being able to offer customers packages with on sports channels–something Disney hasn’t offered to other distributors, including DirecTV

"This is a small way to help you stay connected to your sports and entertainment while we work with Disney to reach a new agreement,” DirecTV said.

Speaking to equity analysts on the first business day back after ABC, ESPN and other Disney channels suddenly went dark on his platform over the Labor Day holiday weekend, DirecTV CFO Ray Carpenter said the pay TV company will battle the media conglomerate "as long as it needs to" to secure fundamental changes in the way networks are licensed and distributed. 

“This dispute is not a run-of-the-mill dispute," Carpenter said. "This is not the kind of dispute where we’re haggling over percentage points on a rate. This is really about changing the model in a way that gives everyone confidence that this industry can survive."

Also read: Disney and ESPN Treat Us All Terribly, and It's a Problem

Just as Charter Communications a year ago drew a line in the sand, demanding that Disney give its pay TV customers access to the SVOD platforms to which the media company was diverting much of its best content, DirecTV wants to distribute what Carpenter calls "skinny, genre-based" bundles of channels. 

DirecTV has released data suggesting that the pay TV audience is somewhat segmented and niche, with less than 40% of users regularly tuning into live sports, and less than 40% of the audience regularly watching pure entertainment channels. "News" and "kids" represent other niche segments. 

Also read: DirecTV Programming Chief: The Venu Sports Guys 'Got Caught With Their Hands in The Cookie Jar in a Big Way'

Disney, along with other media conglomerates, has long resisted this distribution scheme. But the company opened Pandora's Box when it formed a joint venture with Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery to distribute just its linear sports channels ... in a $43-a-month package, branded Venu Sports, that could best be described as a skinny, genre-based bundle. 

The launch of that product has been delayed, with a DirecTV-backed antitrust suit filed by rival pay TV company Fubo successfully obtaining a preliminary injunction against the JV. 

Now that Disney is negotiating in a dystopian pay TV world it created, Carpenter stressed that the blackout -- which started less than half an hour before the kickoff of the USC-vs.-LSU game on ABC Sunday -- could drag on for a while.

Oh, and he said that it was Disney's decision to pull its channels. 

"We were asking to keep the signal up, and that’s usually the case when we run into these situations," Carpenter said. "And unfortunately, Disney was not willing to entertain that. In fact, the timing of when they decided to pull the content was absolutely orchestrated to put the most pain and disruption on our customers."

Networks owned by The Walt Disney Co. went to black on DirecTV just after 7:00 p.m. ET on Sunday as negotiations apparently failed to reach a new carriage agreement. The two sides had extended the deadline of 5 p.m. as conversations continued.

The blackout comes during the first full weekend of college football and days before the start of the NFL season.

DirecTV said that Disney insisted that the satellite TV provider buy other Disney channels and services in order to continue to show sports programming on networks like ESPN.

DirecTV also said any licensing agreement would be contingent on DirecTV waiving future challenges to Disney on antitrust grounds. Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery have been enjoined by a U.S. court from enabling their streaming joint venture Venu from offering only the sports networks to subscribers while preventing other distributors from doing so. 

“The Walt Disney Co. is once again refusing any accountability to consumers, distribution partners, and now the American judicial system,” Rob Thun, chief content officer at DirecTV, said. “Disney is in the business of creating alternate realities, but this is the real world where we believe you earn your way and must answer for your own actions. They want to continue to chase maximum profits and dominant control at the expense of consumers — making it harder for them to select the shows and sports they want at a reasonable price.”

 Disney blamed DirecTV for the breakdown.

“DirecTV chose to deny millions of subscribers access to our content just as we head into the final week of the U.S. Open and gear up for college football and the opening of the NFL season. While we’re open to offering DirecTV flexibility and terms which we’ve extended to other distributors, we will not enter into an agreement that undervalues our portfolio of television channels and programs,” ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro said. “We invest significantly to deliver the No. 1 brands in entertainment, news and sports because that’s what our viewers expect and deserve. We urge DirecTV to do what’s in the best interest of their customers and finalize a deal that would immediately restore our programming.”

DirecTV noted that Disney's actions mirrored changes in the industry, with the best programming, including sports shifting to streaming.

“Consumer frustration is at an all-time high as Disney shifts its best producers, most innovative shows, top teams, conferences, and entire leagues to their direct-to-consumer services while making customers pay more than once for the same programming on multiple Disney platforms,” Thun added. “Disney’s only magic is forcing prices to go up while simultaneously making its content disappear.”

The dispute went public Saturday as both companies began airing messages warning that a blackout was imminent.

Disney's message warned DirecTV and DirecTV Stream customers they could "lose the ESPN networks" and said they should go to KeepMyESPN.com to learn more.

DirecTV's urged viewers to go to its website TVPromise.com to get more information.

Disney agreed to modify how some of its channels are packaged in the agreement ending last year’s blackout with Charter Communications. Charter customers also got some Disney streaming services for free as part of their pay TV subscriptions.

DirecTV is launching a Million Dollar Blitz Sweepstakes, offering customers who enter Visa Reward Cards. 

Residential satellite and internet DirecTV customers can enter the sweepstakes starting September 1. The promotion ends December 31.

Members of DirecTV’s Perks program get additional chances to win with bonus entries.

Like others in the pay-TV business, DirecTV has been losing customers. It finished 2023 with 11.3 million subscribers, down 1.8 million from the previous year, according to an estimate from Leichtman Research Group. 

Also Read: Disney Fee Dispute With DirecTV Goes Public During College Football Games

DirecTV said that it will be giving away 18,000 total prizes that range in value from $50 to $500. Customers can enter each month and new winners will be selected through the end of the year.

DirecTV launched its Perks program earlier this year. Perks included free DirecTV for life for three winners.

As the expiration of their carriage agreement nears, The Walt Disney Co. and DirecTV are going public with their dispute.

During Saturday’s college football games, both sides aired dueling messages warnings that future games could be blacked out, with Disney telling viewers to contact DirecTV and DirecTV telling subscribers to contact Disney to avert the disruption.

The current agreement runs out September 1. (NOTE: The 5 p.m.  ET deadline passed with the Disney networks still appearing on DirecTV. Apparently the two sides agreed to an extension while they continue to negotiate.)

Disney's message warned DirecTV and DirecTV Stream customers they could "lose the ESPN networks" and said they should go to KeepMyESPN.com to learn more.

DirecTV's urged viewers to go to its website TVPromise.com to get more information.

“We remain in active discussions to provide customers with more flexible packages and lower-priced alternatives in one simple experience," a DirecTV spokesperson said.

DirecTV has said it wants to be able to offer lower priced packages that include Disney's sports channels, such as ESPN, but not all of its entertainment channels.

Disney agreed to let Venu, its sports joint venture with Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery stream that type of skinny bundle, but Venu has been prevented from launching by an injunction arising from an antitrust suit filed by Fubu, a sports-focused streaming service that is forced to pay for all of Disney's channels to get ESPN and other Disney sports programming.

Disney agreed to modify the way some of its channels are packaged in the agreement that ended last year's blackout with Charter Communications. Charter customers also got some Disney streaming services for free as part of their pay-TV subscriptions.

"We're working hard to get it done. We want to get it done. We want to deliver for sports fans," ESPN Chairman Jimmy Pitaro told Reuters.

"We do believe that we bring a lot of value. And hopefully DirecTV recognizes the value that we bring and we can continue to serve our fans through their platform," Pitaro added.

On the evening of August 31, 2023, millions of viewers sat down to watch a competitive nationally televised opener to the college football season on ESPN, featuring defending Pac-12 champion Utah upsetting Florida. 

To the surprise of many of Charter Communications' 14.7 million pay TV customers, a blackout of ESPN, along with ABC O&Os and 24 other Disney cable networks, would begin that evening, depriving them of access to the game ... and ultimately changing the way pay TV program licensing negotiations are handled. 

It's definitely no coincidence, given the way these things are intentionally timed, but Disney is on a very similar football-disrupting path with DirecTV that very well could deprive around 11 million DirecTV viewers access to football-laden ESPN and ABC, as well as other Disney channels starting Sept. 1. 

A source close the negotiation told me the primetime ESPN matchup on Saturday between No. 7 Notre Dame and 20th-ranked Texas A&M will finish before the negotiating deadline and will be unaffected. 

But if hot blackout action does break out, Sunday's game between No. 13 LSU and 23rd-ranked USC, set to be simulcast on ESPN and ABC, wouldn't be available on DirecTV satellite, DirecTV Stream or U-Verse TV. (ESPN has a full rundown of the nearly 30 college games being presented on ESPN this weekend.)

And just like last year, when Charter customers were deprived of seeing Aaron Rodgers' ultimately short-lived debut as a New York Jet on Monday Night Football, DirecTV users could miss out on Rodgers return to the NFL field Monday night when the Jets take on the Super Bowl runner-up San Francisco 49ers. 

The negotiations between DirecTV and Disney come after the latter's joint venture with Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery, Venu Sports, was hit with a preliminary injunction. Virtual pay TV operator Fubo, with affidavit assistance from DirecTV, successfully argued that the JV is anti-competitive, because it gave itself flexible program distribution terms -- such as the ability to create genre-based bundles -- that pay TV operators have long sought and been rebuffed over. 

Also read: DirecTV Programming Chief: The Venu Sports Guys 'Got Caught With Their Hands in The Cookie Jar in a Big Way'

In a declaration made last week, DirecTV programming chief Rob Thun said he'll be looking for those kind of flexible network licensing terms when he negotiates with each of the Venu partners over the next 12 months. 

Disney’s president of platform distribution, Justin Connolly, told the Penske showbiz trades, “I think, or I know, that they are trying to spin and push this narrative that they want to explore more flexible, skinnier bundles, and that we refuse to engage on that, and bottom line: That is blatantly false, and we’ve been negotiating with them for weeks, and we proposed a variety of flexible options … but yet they haven’t engaged with us on the options." 

Just two business days after a federal judge slapped a shocking preliminary injunction on the Venu Sports joint venture, questioning the basic ethics of traditional pay TV program licensing practices in the process, DirecTV's top programming executive, Rob Thun, has proposed some new rules for how deals are structured. 

In a memo sent to Next TV and other media outlets, headlined "Looking Toward a Brighter TV Future," Thun proposed that content owners create more flexible, "genre-based" packages -- such as bundles themed around sports and news -- that better appeal to consumers. 

He suggested that the major media conglomerates work with operators to create options for consumers with price points closer to direct-to-consumer streaming options. 

Thun also asked content companies to help DirecTV create "aggregated experiences" for consumers, combining live-linear and on-demand programming, rather than "numerous disjointed entry points while managing multiple individual subscriptions to those products."

Of course, this isn't the first time that Thun -- or other program executives for rival pay TV companies -- has proposed this kind of stuff. It's just that now, thanks to the massive miscalculation that is Venu Sports, the pay TV guys have the momentum. 

With DirecTV's deal with Disney up in September, and negotiations with the other Venu principals, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery, set to occur in the next 12 months, Thun is level-setting expectations, striking while three of the biggest program network suppliers are on their heels. 

Certainly, in terms of leverage, Disney, Fox and WBD set themselves back mightily with Venu, a service that packaged the major linear sports channels from each conglomerate, but seemed not have intended to play by any of the rules long governing the principals' struggling pay TV partners. 

Venu's backers, after all, didn't require their JV to bundle minor entertainment channels. Or force minimum penetration levels of channels down its throat. 

Keenly aware of the disparity, virtual pay TV operator Fubo took the trio to court over antitrust concerns right after it was announced in February -- a move backed by DirecTV. As executives for the trio of media companies were gradually deposed, more and more issues arose that concerned the court. 

"They got caught with their hands in the cookie jar in a big way," Thun told Next TV. "The judge saw all the evidence, and it didn't really create a good picture for the venue partners."

In fact, in granting Fubo a preliminary injunction against the JV on Friday,  U.S. District Court Judge Margaret Garnett suggested that the way media companies like Disney, Fox and WBD bundle their channels is "bad for consumers." 

For his part, Thun said the internal disclosures in court of how Venu intended to do business "left a bad taste" his mouth. 

However, he said he's been pleased to see that Disney, Fox and WBD see an opportunity in a new kind of pay TV business that offers consumers far more choice. 

"The one thing we agree in is there is an ocean of opportunity," he said, 

Nexstar Media Group collected $10.5 million in retransmission-consent fees from DirecTV by fraudulently withholding information about one of its stations, a New York State appeals court ruled on Thursday.

Nexstar had appealed a July ruling by the New York State Supreme Court after DirecTV sued Nexstar to recover those fees.

The case revolved around a new distribution agreement in which Nexstar received fees to carry a station then-known as WHAG, an NBC affiliate in Hagerstown, Maryland.

DirecTV pays station groups for affiliates of the Big Four networks. It usually does not pay for independent stations, the two sides testified.

NBC told Nexstar WHAG would be losing its affiliation, but Nexstar kept that fact from DirecTV while the new deal was being negotiated and continued to collect fees after the station became an independent station and changed its call letters to in 2016, one year into the agreement. The station is now known as WDVM. 

When it found out about the change, DirecTV said it would stop paying the fee for the station and asked Nexstar to return the fees it has received while the station was independent. Nexstar refused and DirecTV filed its lawsuit.

The Supreme Court denied Nexstar’s motion for a summary judgment dismissing the complaint. It granted DirecTV’s motion for summary judgment on its breach of contract claims, but denied a motion for a summary judgment on a claim of fraudulent inducement.

“Supreme Court should have granted summary judgment in plaintiff’s favor on its fraudulent inducement cause of action,” the appeals court ruled.

Also Read: DOJ Tells Appeals Court to Reinstate DirecTV’s Antitrust Suit Against Nexstar

Despite what the court called Nexstar’s “unproven, self-serving contentions” that it expected the NBC affiliation to be renewed, “there was unrebutted testimony from two NBC employees who testified that NBC advised defendant that there would be no further extensions.”

Nexstar “knew that the termination of the NBC affiliation was a fait accompli and intentionally concealed this information from plaintiff,” the appeals court said in its ruling.

Nexstar filed documents that some of its stations would be losing NBC affiliations, but did not include WHAG in the documents.

“Defendant misrepresented in these documents that defendant expected the network affiliations of its stations to be renewed,” the court said. “As plaintiff did not have access to the relevant information, it reasonably relied on the fraudulent representations of defendant to its detriment.”

With football season starting, DirecTV has enlisted Deion Sanders, aka Coach Prime, in its campaign featuring pigeons talking about getting DirecTV without a satellite dish.

In February, DirecTV launched the campaign featuring pigeons Frank and Bobby, voiced by Henry Winkler and Steve Buscemi .

In a new spot, the birds are back, with Frank and Bobby joined by Coach Prime.

Also Read: DirecTV Turns 30: Colorful History, Questions About The Future 

In the spot, the pigeons are watching people watching college football.

"Are they really going to spend all day streaming college football on DirecTV?," asks Bobby.

"Can you blame them?  They’ve got the biggest rivalries,” replies Frank.

“They’re bowl games,” Coach Prime chirps in, ordering Frank and Bobby to go grab a bowl of chips and salsa.

The campaign is designed to let viewers know that with  DirecTV programming streaming is an easy, convenient and satellite-free way to watch college and pro football.

And Coach Prime is an expert on football, having been a Hall of Fame cornerback in the NFL and now the controversial coach of the Colorado Buffaloes. 

The company will begin with a 30-second version of the spot on TV. There will also be a 15-second spot, digital out-of-home ads, radio spots and experiential elements.

DirecTV is also offering new viewers a discount on some DirecTV Stream packages.  

DirecTV, which had around 11.3 million remaining customers across its multiple pay TV platforms as of the end of last year, isn't pushing satellite TV very hard these days. 

Visit the company’'s landing page, and it will direct you to DirecTV Stream services “unless you don't have high-speed internet, live in a rural area or just prefer a satellite dish.” 

The pay TV company hasn't put a new satellite into orbit in 2019. And it's not even clear as to how many satellite TV customers it has left. 

Still, for the first time in five years, the pay TV company — controlled by TPG Capital since AT&T spun it off in 2021 — has upgraded its UX for its satellite customers. 

The new design, which is being pushed in a phased rollout starting Wednesday to all Genie and Gemini CPE gadgets in Denver, seems to abide by the now-standard Netflix playbook, with thumbnails, carousels and side navigation. 

The UX will include four carousels: “Live TV,” “Continue Watching,” “Discover” and ”Live Sports.” 

There also appear to be algorithmic capabilities, with the user’s selected favorites and most-watched channels driving what gets surfaced on the UX most prominently. “Later this year, the user interface will include personalized content curated to the users’ preferred programming,“ DirecTV said. 

Additionally, DirecTV redesigned the “Sports Central” submenu destination it rolled out on the satellite UX in 2023. 

The U.S. Justice Department filed an friend-of-the-court briefing earlier this week, asking the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reinstate DirecTV’s antitrust suit against Nexstar Media Group and two smaller station groups.

Also read: DirecTV To Appeal Judge’s Decision To Toss Its Nexstar Antitrust Case

DirecTV accused Nexstar of conspiring to fix broadcast retransmission license fees through management services agreements with smaller station groups Mission Broadcasting and White Knight. 

Back on March 20, U.S. District Court Judge Kevin Castel of the Southern District of New York dismissed DirecTV's case. He ruled that any financial injury DirecTV suffered as a result wasn't caused by any price-fixing conducted by Nexstar, Mission or White Knight. Rather, damages resulted from DirecTV’s decision not to do business, starting in 2022, with Mission and White Knight stations … with the subsequent loss of programming causing DirecTV customers to unsubscribe. 

The DOJ believes Castel applied the wrong legal framework here, and it has asked the court overseeing DirecTV's appeal to “correct the district court’s erroneous holding in its antitrust-standing analysis that the sole type of injury for which a private consumer plaintiff can recover in a price-fixing case is the payment of supracompetitive prices.

“The harms from a price-fixing conspiracy are not so limited,” the DOJ added. “Price fixing corrupts the competitive process, and that anticompetitive harm can result in various antitrust injuries, such as reduced output and decreased quality, in addition to increased prices.”

DirecTV has accused of turning the smaller Mission and White Knight into "sidecars," negotiating retransmission consent for their 27 stations in 25 designated marketing areas in which Nexstar already manages duopolies. 

Seven months after the FCC proposed new rules that would eliminate “video service junk fees,” including early-termination charges, DirecTV is still pushing back. 

In a letter just sent to the agency, DirecTV outside counsel Michael Nilsson said early termination fees (ETFs), which can range from $450 to $700, are necessary in a linear pay TV business that requires installation of pricey equipment. 

“DirecTV does not charge customers ETFs after their first two years, unless a customer chooses to accept an offer with an ETF, such as a new equipment upgrade or a retention offer with a lower monthly price,” Nilsson wrote. “Without ETFs, DirecTV would likely be forced to require subscribers to pay equipment and installation costs up front, raise monthly prices or both.”

This “unintended consequence“ of the FCC’s notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) “would be to make switching to DirecTV considerably harder, particularly for low-income subscribers,” added DirecTV's bleeding-heart barrister.

The satellite TV operator also took aim at another part of the NPRM targeting so-called “billing cycle fees” (BCFs) — the FCC wants pay TV operators like DirecTV to give customers back a prorated refund for the remainder of the month if they canceled within a 30-day cycle they've already paid for. 

Nilsson tried to clarify DirecTV’s position on BCFs, stating that such rules could hinder cable and satellite TV companies from competing with online video distributors (OVDs), which would face the same restrictions.

“If a subscriber’s monthly term starts on the first of the month, and she cancels service on November 15, she in theory pays for the rest of November (that is, until December 1) but not for December,” Nilsson explained. “In addition, subscribers do not require ‘lead time’ to make their cancellation effective (e.g., a subscriber who calls on November 30 will not be charged for the billing cycle starting December 1). DirecTV emphasized that imposing additional regulations on satellite and cable providers (which are losing market share) will further inhibit their ability to compete against OVDs (which are gaining market share), and could ultimately leave consumers with fewer video choices overall.”

Cable lobby NCTA–The Internet and Television Association sent a similar missive to the FCC back in February. 

“We agree with NCTA that the commission should not adopt its ETF and BCF proposals but that, if it chooses to act, a better approach would be to prohibit only ‘unjust and unreasonable” ETFs,” Nilsson added. “Of course, the question then would be what is considered ‘unjust and unreasonable,’ and we offered our views that, at a minimum, ETFs used to permit consumers to pay for upfront costs over time should be considered at least presumptively just and reasonable.”

If the biggest event on TV is the Super Bowl, the biggest event over Super Bowl weekend used to be DirecTV’s “Super Saturday Night.”

The satellite-TV company would erect a temporary stadium where, during the day, celebrities and NFL legends would play beach football. In Indianapolis in 2012, teams featured Joe Montana, Deion Sanders, Peyton Manning, Cam Newton, Jordin and Phillippi Sparks, Neil Patrick Harris and David Arquette. (Active NFL players stopped participating after rookie Patriots running back Robert Edwards tore up his knee in a similar game before the 1999 Pro Bowl in Hawaii.)

In the evening, the sand would be carted off to make room for concerts that featured the biggest names in music. Katy Perry appeared in 2012. In other years, DirecTV had Beyoncé and Jay-Z, Kanye West and Rihanna, Jennifer Lopez, Foo Fighters and even Taylor Swift, before she met Travis Kelce.

“It was exciting to be part of the largest video platform in the country with a distinct brand, exclusive sports and original content,” Daniel York, who was chief content officer and executive VP for DirecTV from 2012 to 2015, told Broadcasting+Cable.

“It was exciting that the Saturday night before every Super Bowl the DirecTV Super Saturday night was the event of Super Bowl weekend to go to,” said York, now CEO of Cox Media Group.

Also Read: ‘This Company Can Produce A Lot More Value Both in Cash for Shareholders and Also for Customers,’ Says DirecTV COO Michael Wittrock

Launched 30 years ago on June 17, 1994, DirecTV rose to become the country’s top pay TV distributor, revolutionizing the industry, in part because of its exclusive rights to NFL Sunday Ticket, which enabled fans to watch the out-of-market games that weren’t on broadcast or cable television. 

The company is marking its anniversary with DirecTV Day. Employees will be engaged in more than 30 volunteer events and other activities that will benefit charitable organizations including Ronald McDonald House Charities, DirecTV’s national strategic charity partner.

The company will also be hosting employee celebrations around the country with food trucks, barbecues, raffles and other activities.

Over the course of its colorful history, DirecTV has gone through a number of ownership changes, being part of Hughes Electronics, General Motors, News Corp. and AT&T.

Now, while the  entire pay TV industry has been losing subscribers to cord-cutting as viewers turn to streaming, DirecTV has been among the hardest hit. From a peak of 21 million subscribers, it is now estimated to have less than 9 million subscribers, according to Leichtman Research Group. It also gave up NFL Sunday Ticket.

DirecTV chief operating officer Michael Wittrock thinks the company can bounce back.

“I've been around this company for almost two decades and I've been in the industry for 31 years,“ Wittrock said. “I believe we can get back to growth.” 

Also Read: ‘This Company Can Produce A Lot More Value Both in Cash for Shareholders and also for Customers,’ Says DirecTV CEO Michael Wittrock

Analysts aren’t so sure there’s a place for direct broadcast satellite as streaming takes over the TV business.

Remember Pagers?

“The end game is the end,” said MoffettNathanson principal and senior analyst Craig Moffett, who has examined the industry for decades.

“There are some technologies that eventually go away,“ Moffett said, pointing to pagers. “It is the natural order of things.

“People talked about how the pager business was never going away because doctors and nurses will always rely on pagers,” he said. Smartphones buried the pager.

Moffett said that the “death knell” for the satellite business was the emergence of video-on-demand for cable. 

“It’s obvious that a pure broadcast platform isn’t long for this world,” Moffett said. He recalled that in 2012, DirecTV issued 30-year bonds. “Who in their right mind thinks that satellite TV is still going to exist in 30 years. That’s utterly insane.”

Direct broadcast satellite was a hot technology when it started.

Stanley E.. Hubbard recalls that when the Federal Communications Commission began accepting licenses for DBS, his father, Stanley S. Hubbard, CEO of Hubbard Broadcasting and the son of the founder, jumped into the bidding in the first round.

A Tower in the Sky

“The broadcasting business was all about the tower. The tallest tower has the best signal,” Hubbard said. With satellite broadcasting, his dad exclaimed: “Holy cow! You mean you could put a tower 22,300 feet up and cover the whole country with one tower? That’s a no-brainer.”

There were a number of companies bidding on satellite licenses. Hubbard’s United States Satellite Broadcasting (USSB) got a license in round one. Hughes, which would start DirecTV, got a license in round two and Dish Network founder Charlie Ergen scored in round three.

Hughes announced a partnership with NBC, Cablevision Systems’ Chuck Dolan and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. called Sky Cable, but it fell apart.

USSB decided to work with Hughes and DirecTV because DirecTV had more transponders and consumers were more likely to point their dishes in that direction, said Hubbard, who was CEO of USSB. 

The two satellite companies offered differentiated products, with Hughes offering many basic cable channels and USSB focusing on premium networks, making deals with Showtime and HBO.

USSB and Hughes worked together to create a set-top box that could receive both companies’ signals. Hubbard said the money USSB contributed persuaded General Motors, which had acquired Hughes, to go ahead and build the system.

“At one point, I got a call from [Hughes DBS head] Eddy Hartenstein saying they’ve got a name for their business, but it conflicted with a copyright that we hold for a new service we had in D.C. called TV Direct,” Hubbard said. “Hughes wanted to name its service DirecTV.  We said, ‘No problem, we’ll sign it over to you.’ It was just part of the goodwill of the business.”

Hubbard needed investors to launch its satellite business. One of its early investors was Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft and later an owner of Charter Communications.

Hubbard remembers Allen sitting in his father’s office in Minneapolis. 

“He wanted to look us in the eye, but he also wanted to look at the guts of the system,” Hubbard said. “We had a prototype of the RCA receiver box [being made by Thomson of France]. Well, Allen says ‘Can I look inside?’ We said sure.” 

Allen pulled a screwdriver out of his own pocket, unscrewed the bottom of the box and started staring at the circuitry. After about three minutes, Allen looked up and said he couldn’t see how the audio was going to work.

The Hubbards’ chief engineer, Ray Conover, said that component wasn’t in the box yet, but explained how it would work, Hubbard said. “Allen put his head back down for another minute or two and when he looked up he said, ‘That’s a nice design.‘ ”

Cowboy Maloney’s

DirecTV was launched on June 17, 1994. The first digital satellite system was bought by LeMoyne Martin at Cowboy Maloney’s Electric City in Jackson, Mississippi.

Up to that point,  cable systems were basically local monopolies with closed systems. 

“To be able to get two providers was a game-changer in the marketplace, particularly for the premium services,” Hubbard said.

DirecTV had 1 million subscribers by November 1995.

Partly because Hubbard was in the broadcast business, USSB and DirecTV kept the channels numbers one to 99 open for the day when satellite could carry local broadcast signals — something that came to pass in 1999 after spot-beam satellite transponders were deployed.

Hubbard sold USSB to DirecTV in 1998 for $1.3 billion, giving DirecTV more than 7 million subscribers.

“I still remember the day we announced the merger. One of the first phone calls I got was from [legendary boxing promoter] Don King,” Hubbard said. 

USSB had been distributing King’s pay-per-view fights on Showtime.

King said he wanted to bring a world championship fight to Minneapolis and have all of the USSB employees as his guests, Hubbard said. The fight took place not long after.

USSB was sold because it was best for Hubbard’s outside investors. “If it were just the Hubbards, I believe we would still be in that business,” Hubbard said.

DBS challenged the cable monopolies and expanded the pay TV business, with cable subscriber numbers going up even as DirecTV grew, according to analyst Bruce Leichtman, founder and principal analyst of Leichtman Research Group.

Beaming Into Rural America

“Where satellite was most successful in its early days — and is even still today — was in rural America,” Leichtman said.

Cable wasn’t available in many rural areas, and where it was, it had low channel capacity.

“Cable was forced to expand channel capacity,” Leichtman said. “It introduced digital cable and that improved cable.”

One channel cable couldn’t duplicate was NFL Sunday Ticket, which was exclusively available to DirecTV subscribers.

Leichtman said Sunday Ticket never had more than about 2 million subscribers.

“What NFL Sunday Ticket did is set the image for DirecTV as the kind of ‘sexy’ product,” he said. “They were the sports product, compared to Dish, which was more the value product. Between the two of them, DirecTV always did better in the suburban and urban markets.”

Don’t Be Stupid

DirecTV COO Wittrock started out in cable.  Back then, Wittrock recalled: “DBS stood for ‘don’t be stupid.’ That was the initial cable position.”

Despite the warning, the Marine Corps reservist switched over to satellite and joined DirecTV in 2005.

“I was impressed by the model just because it had a nationwide footprint and it could truly do pay television,” Wittrock said. “It could combine all of the services that a household would want to watch and and put it in one place all on one user interface."

Jamie Dyckes, now DirecTV’s VP of sports and revenue marketing, joined the company in 2000 after working for the then-Anaheim Angels and Mighty Ducks of Anaheim when the pro-sports teams were owned by The Walt Disney Co.

“I’ve actually been a subscriber of DirecTV since 1995, a year after they launched,” Dyckes said.

Early on, Dyckes worked to get DirecTV distributed in stadiums and arenas. Unlike at Disney, where the corporate atmosphere was very starchy and you had to wear a suit and tie, DirecTV had a younger vibe, he said.

“There was a lot of energy,“ he said. ”We were changing the world. Cable kind of sucked and the picture wasn’t great. And with broadcast, if you didn’t live in the right place, you couldn’t get it at all. It was fun to be part of the solution for a lot of people.”

At first explaining satellite TV to consumers was tough. People were hesitant to put a dish on their roof. And back then, you had to pay for your equipment.

Two game-changers came when DirecTV switched to a leased-equipment model and when it started carrying local stations.

“That was a huge boon because now there was no reason not to get it,” Dyckes said.

Sports was a big part of DirecTV’s identity from the beginning, with NFL Sunday Ticket arriving a few months after the platform launched. DirecTV also had the out-of-market packages for the other major sports leagues.

DirecTV created Red Zone, but the NFL took it over, Dyckes said.

Sports was also a reason why DirecTV converted early to high definition. “It was another step-level function because cable just couldn’t do it,“ he said. “They didn’t have the infrastructure to do it that quickly.”

In those days, the DirecTV offices were a bit like the version of ESPN seen in the network’s long-running commercials, with politicians like Mitch McConnell and business tycoons like Rupert Murdoch (who for a while controlled DirecTV) roaming the corridors, Dyckes said.

DirecTV would have athletes like Randy Moss and Kevin Garnett visit its call centers to thank customer service reps for keeping customer satisfaction high.

DirecTV also had some high profile customers, Dyckes said. It is available on Air Force One and President Bill Clinton called DirecTV’s ads the funniest he’d ever seen. Other VIPs got the DirecTV titanium package. They paid one flat price and got all the services that were available in as many rooms as they wanted.  

“It was very exclusive, like the black American Express card used to be back in the day,“ Dyckes said. “If you looked at the list of who was on it, it made sense.”

DirecTV was having success despite its one-way platform being inferior from a technology point of view to cable, former DirecTV exec Dan York said.

“Because of its brand position, it was able to win mindshare on innovations like HD and then 4K, TV Everywhere and whole-home DVRs,” York said.

DTV had NFL Sunday Ticket, which boosted the brand and generated important revenue from bars and restaurants, which were also satisfied customers.

“Content is so important these days. At Hooters, it is the undercurrent of everything we do,” said Bruce Skala, chief marketing officer for Hooters. “DirecTV For Business consistently delivers content to us that creates appointment viewing in our stores and makes us so successful.”

DirecTV also got into original programming with Channel 101, later rebranded as The Audience Channel. DirecTV subscribers got the first look at the last season of NBC’s Friday Night Lights. And it aired other series, including The Dan Patrick Show and Loudermilk, now popular on Netflix.

Then came AT&T, which acquired DirecTV in 2015 for $49.5 billion. AT&T would also acquire Time Warner.

Misguided Strategy

“The approach was to have a scaled national video platform that could be bundled with a national wireless platform and a high-speed internet product in large sections of the country,” York said. “One thing that was said then was ‘the future of wireless is video and the future of video is wireless.’”

At first, the combination of DirecTV and AT&T’s U-verse TV made AT&T's video platforms the largest video provider. “At one point we were about 25 million customers across all platforms reflecting about 25% of the market,” York said.

Acquiring DirecTV gave AT&T and U-verse a much better cost structure, particularly when it came to programming.

But AT&T’s plan didn’t work.

DirecTV’s accelerating losses were less the product of consumer behavior than what Leichtman described as AT&T’s  “misguided strategy” in purchasing DirecTV and then Time Warner. 

“AT&T really didn't know the business. They didn't know what they bought and I don’t think they really understood what they were running,” he said.

Leichtman said the DBS business had been doing fine by bringing in new subscribers with promotional offers to more than offset the subs that rolled off with those discounts expired.  

“What changed that model was AT&T saying we're not going to fund this promotional pricing and keep playing this promotional game,” Leichtman said. “Once you took away those promotional prices, that completely changed the game.”

AT&T spun off DirecTV, AT&T TV and U-verse to a new company headed by investment company TPG in a deal that valued DirecTV at just $15 billion.

Wittrock said DirecTV and the rest of the pay TV business were surprised by how quickly subscribers left pay TV.

“I think everybody in the industry — and even some of the best analysts — missed the projection on how fast it would decline and how fast it would disrupt,” he said. “In the end, I think AT&T recognized that the media properties it bought could produce more on their own, which led to the divestiture.”

What happens now?

Analyst Leichtman says the new owners understand the business, as does management, led by CEO Bill Morrow and Wittrock. But they face a stiff challenge.

 “Obviously they can't grow satellite subs. That would not be possible,” Leichtman said. 

“They have made their intentions well-known with their advertising, right? They are advertising DirecTV without the dish,” Leichtman said. “Now can DirecTV transition more to a streaming service? They are a TV brand name, but the question is how much does that brand name mean? Is that synonymous with a satellite dish?”

The job for DirecTV now is to manage which subscribers to acquire and try to retain long-term, high-lifetime-value subscribers, he said.

Wittrock said traditional pay TV and DirecTV will be around longer that critics expect.

He said the company is focused on an approach it calls, “We Care. We Challenge. We Deliver.”

“The culture here produces strong scores in surveys,” he said. “It’s probably one of the most resilient cultures I’ve seen in terms of people collaborating, people wanting to fix problems for consumers, people wanting to win.”

Any possible turnaround by DirecTV will take capital for investment in streaming and the cooperation of networks to help pay TV distributors offer more-compelling, better-priced products,” Wittrock said.

“That would increase the price-value relationship, and I do think that as a solely focused pay TV distributor, we can get back to a growth state,” he said.

As for streaming replacing satellites at DirecTV, Wittrock said: “I do see that is coming. But I think it's farther out than a lot of people would predict.”

Stan Hubbard doesn’t see satellite disappearing either.

“For video, DBS still is the single most efficient way to send it ever devised,“ Hubbard said. “There’s still a hell of a lot of people that subscribe. There’s still a hell of a lot of people that watch.”

Hubbard said he still has a dish on his roof. 

“I sure do,” he said. “But look, I'm also also in today's world right? I’m bringing in stuff on broadband and I actually have the DirecTV app on my Apple TV box, which ties into my subscription. So everyone evolves.”

These days, Wittrock said, “I spend most of my time on streaming. That's where most of our product development seems to be. But it’s going to take a cruise missile to get a satellite dish off of my home.”

There are better days ahead for DirecTV, according to Michael Wittrock, the company’s chief operating officer.

“I think this company can produce a lot more value both in cash for shareholders and also for customers outside of AT&T as a divestiture entity,” Wittrock told Broadcasting+Cable. 

AT&T, which bought DirecTV for $49.5 billion in 2015, spun it off in 2021 in a deal that valued the company at $15 billion.

Also Read: DirecTV Turns 30: Colorful History, Questions About The Future 

Can DirecTV, marking its 30th anniversary, reverse its decline in subscribers and grow?  “I believe it can, for DirecTV and I think it can be for the industry under the right circumstances,” Wittrock said. “It’s got to be a model that can work for the whole value chain."

As consumers have cut the cord and shifted from pay TV to streaming, satellite companies have been among the hardest hit.

Also Read: DirecTV Lost 1.8 Million Subscribers in 2023, Analyst Estimates

One way DirecTV can stop bleeding customers is by getting itself more into the streaming game. 

Its current marketing campaign features pigeons stunned to observe that viewers can get DirecTV without a satellite dish.

“We’re trying to message to customers that we're not just satellite anymore. We have a robust set of streaming options for them,” Wittrock said. “We still have a ways to go. We’re not where we want to be.”

The company has also been trying to bring the luster back to the DirecTV brand lost since it was spun off by AT&T in 2021. 

Wittrock points to metrics showing that since the AT&T divestiture, customer service has improved and it share of gross subscriber adds in the industry has grown.

It has also been returning more profit than expected to AT&T, which still holds a 70% stake in DirecTV. In the second quarter, AT&T reported $300 million in net income from its share of DirecTV’s earnings.

But the real trick is solving the problem that the streaming era has presented to consumers, Wittrock said. 

Consumers can either pay twice for content by shelling out for both pay TV and subscription services. Or they can cut the cord and trying to figure out how to find — and pay for — the content they want to watch.

Wittrock said DirecTV is uniquely positioned to solve those difficulties for consumers.

“I think we’re one of the only ones focused on fixing the problem for consumers when it comes to the entertainment experience,” he said.

“We’re back to being a pure-play focused pay TV distributor, one of the only ones with a nationwide footprint with a brand that screams out to customers, and we’re trying to do the same thing we did in 1994 and use content, service and technology to be the one place that consumers can relay on to come to for all the sports, news, movies and shows that their family knows and loves,” he said.

Veteran cable and satellite analyst Craig Moffett of MoffettNathanson thinks DirecTV is making the right moves, but isn’t sure it has much of a future.

“They’ve done pretty well with reducing their costs,“ Moffett said. “They’re clear-eyed about their business.” 

While adding a streaming platform will help DirecTV monetize what is still an attractive brand name, “the business is what it is. The goal is to run it as profitably as possible for as long as possible,” Moffett said.

Wittrock acknowledged DirecTV will need capital to achieve a turnaround.

“I think our investment into our strategy and our product road map is has been really has been aggressive and it's been very surgical since divestiture almost three years ago,” he said.

DirecTV is no longer losing $1 billion a year on NFL Sunday Ticket, once its signature and exclusive product.

“We were able to take some of the money that was being wasted on the NFL and apply it toward our product road map and the future of our business,” he said.

Programmer Problems

DirecTV will also need the cooperation of programmers. Those programmers have caused a lot of the problems facing the pay TV industry by jumping into streaming, which has resulted in billions of dollars of losses and a shift of attractive content away from linear networks and the distributors that carry them.

To rebuild customer value, “we’re going to need everybody’s help,” Wittrock said.

Programmers have to agree to let DirecTV and other distributors offer more modular packages of channels as an alternative to the current bloated bundles that are too expensive and are watered down with little-watched networks.

The types of deals recently reached by Charter Communications with Paramount Global, which gives Charter subscribers access to Paramount Plus at no additional cost, and with Disney, which also provides customers with Disney Plus and eliminates some of Disney’s long-tail networks is a good start.

DirecTV would have done a similar deal had its current agreements with Disney or Paramount been about to expire.

“I think we could have gotten something similar done because that’s absolutely our strategy,” Wittrock said. “It was just not our turn at the table.”

The key to DirecTV’s strategy is “super aggregation,” or giving consumers all the content they want in one place and making it easy to find and watch, whether that’s on satellite or streaming, Wittrock said.

Already, DirecTV has one of the most reliable products in the industry. Without consumers knowing it, if there's a satellite outage, it has technology that moves that viewer to streaming, he said.

Traditional pay TV is going to have a longer shelf life than anybody thinks on its traditional distribution mediums, he added. Eventually, though, it will inevitably shift to streaming, Wittrock said.

A federal appeals court has rejected an Indianapolis broadcaster’s claims that DirecTV and Dish Network racially discriminated against his company by declining to pay retransmission fees to carry its stations. 

Circle City Broadcasting and its majority owner, DuJuan McCoy, had asked the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse a U.S. District Court’s decision last year to throw out the cases without a trial. (The news was reported by Indiana Lawyer.)

Circle City had sued the satellite TV companies back in 2020 because they refused to pay retrans fees after Circle City bought Indianapolis TV stations WISH and WNDY from Nexstar Media Group. McCoy charged Dish and DirecTV were discriminating against the stations because they were now part of a Black-owned business. 

“For their part, Dish and DirecTV presented clear evidence of a race-neutral reason for their contractual negotiating decisions — Circle City’s lack of bargaining power,” the 7th Circuit ruled.

According to court documents, when asked by McCoy why he was offered lower rates than competitors, a representative for Dish responded that “extremely large groups, like Nexstar, are able to extract money for stations that [multichannel distributors] would not pay for otherwise, simply by withholding consent for the stations [multichannel distributors] really do want,” a practice Dish calls an “industry norm.”

DirecTV on Wednesday said it has finalized a new multiyear carriage agreement with Diamond Sports Group. 

The pay TV operator didn't disclose specifics on its deal, but an individual close to the arrangement said DirecTV carved out channel packaging flexibility similar to what was achieved last July when the satellite TV company renewed a contract to carry Charter Communications Lakers- and Dodgers regional sports networks (RSNs), SportsNet and SportsNet LA, respectively. 

Notably, DirecTV is not currently carrying RSNs, including the Diamond's Bally Sports-branded channels, in its $70-a-month base "Entertainment" tier. 

Also Read: Everything You Need To Know About the Bally Sports Bankruptcy

“DirecTV has always been a sports leader, and we continue to see significant opportunity for both our residential and commercial customers in local sports," said Rob Thun, chief content officer for DirecTV, in a statement. "We want to ensure our customers receive more flexibility, choice and value, and this agreement provides them with those capabilities. Diamond’s regional sports networks remain a key component of our live sports offering, and we look forward to working with Diamond and the many popular MLB, NBA, NHL, and other teams it retains for years to come under this new agreement.”

Diamond Sports Group, which manages 17 Bally Sports local channels, is trying to exit a bankruptcy restructuring process that's dragged on 15 months. It secured a carriage renewal with Charter early in April, and announced a deal with Cox Communications on Tuesday. 

More troublesome is its impasse with Comcast -- 13 Bally Sports channels were pulled off the grids of Xfinity TV customers at 12 a.m. Wednesday, after Diamond and the No. 2 U.S. pay TV operator failed to carve out an agreement. 

David Preschlack, CEO of Diamond, stated: “We are pleased to extend our relationship with DirecTV to provide high quality local sports telecasts for passionate fans in the home markets of our team partners. This is a significant development for Diamond, and we highly value the relationship we have built with DirecTV and their customers over the course of many years. We remain focused on executing the steps necessary to reorganize Diamond with a structure that drives sustainable value for our stakeholders, including our distributors and league and team partners.”

Diamond Sports Group has reached an agreement in principal on a multiyear carriage renewal with DirecTV, reducing the number of big hurdles still in front of the bankrupt operator of the Bally Sports regional sports network to just one — a renewal of its carriage deal with Comcast, which expires Tuesday. 

The tentative agreement with DirecTV was confirmed to Next TV by an individual with inside knowledge of the negotiations, after the news was tweeted out Monday by Puck’s John Ourand. 

Also Read: Everything You Need To Know About the Bally Sports Bankruptcy

Diamond, a subsidiary set up by Sinclair Broadcast Group to manage the Bally Sports channels after the broadcaster purchased them for $10.6 billion in 2019, has been playing a high-stakes game of Whac-A-Mole since March of last year, when it sought bankruptcy protection in a Houston federal court. 

As it has worked to renegotiate money-losing local TV contracts with NBA, NHL and Major League Baseball team partners, the specter of expiring contracts with the largest pay TV operators, Charter Communications, Comcast and DirecTV, has been a major hindrance for Diamond. 

But the subsidiary has slowly worked to solve the problem. 

Last fall, Diamond was able to reach short-term extensions with DirecTV and Comcast. And earlier this month, the subsidiary announced a long-term agreement with Charter. 

A Comcast renewal is likely challenging, given the cable company’s inclination in other recent deals to push RSNs into more expensive tiers. 

Also read: Comcast’s MASN Renewal Kicks Orioles and Nationals RSN to More Expensive Ultimate Tier

“Can [Diamond] secure the long path to tiering on the option that’s not basic?” texted one sports media executive to Next TV Monday morning. “Given what I’ve heard, that’s a tough one. Not sure where they’re at, but I expect they will get a deal done.”

An agreement with Comcast would seem to clear the way for Diamond to finally emerge from bankruptcy on June 18, when a confirmation hearing on its reorganization plan is set. 

To give its subscribers more content to pick from, DirecTV Stream is making deals to carry streaming channels from Cineverse and additional digital multicast channels from E.W. Scripps. 

The new channels are expected to be available to subscribers of DirecTV’s Enttertainment tier or higher on Tuesday afternoon (April 23). The channels can also be accessed by other DirecTV subscribers online or via the DirecTV app.

Cineverse, which focuses on streaming, is putting its The Bob Ross Channel, Comedy Dynamics, Dog Whisperer With Cesar Millan, Dove Channel and MeatEater TV on DirecTV.

“We are creating a second-to-none lineup of streaming channels that will allow our customers to choose from a wider variety of genres or explore their most avid interests in greater depth,” Rebecca Nelson, senior VP of content and programming at DirecTV, said. “This new relationship with Cineverse allows us to draw from one of the industry’s most dynamic portfolios to strategically add more channels as our customers begin to discover and embrace these new options.”

Also Read: DirecTV to Let Satellite Customers Drop Local Stations From Bundle to Cut Bill

DirecTV and Cineverse said they will work together to identify other Cineverse streaming channels that could be added to DirecTV.

“With DirecTV, our channels continue to expand their reach across platforms, increasing our ability to connect with existing fandoms and new audiences for our premium content across every popular genre,” Cineverse executive VP, partnerships Marc Rashba said.

Scripps channels Court TV and Scripps News are also being added to DirecTV Tuesday.  

DirecTV has been carrying Scripps’ Bounce and Grit channels since 2022.

Leichtman Research Group estimates that DirecTV reaches 11.3 million subscribers after losing 1.8 million customers in 2023.

DirecTV said it has been adding content and channels recently and said the Cineverse agreement alone makes about 4,000 hours of on-demand shows available to subscribers in genres including action-adventure, anime, animation, comedy, crime, drama, documentary, news, romance, reality, science fiction, horror kids and family, sports, westerns and music.

As regional sports networks have stopped carrying certain teams, DirecTV has been among the carriers picking up games produced by Major League Baseball.

The satellite company also recently added eight more The CW affiliates to its lineup.

DirecTV has confirmed that it will appeal a federal judge in New York’s decision to throw out its antitrust lawsuit against Nexstar Media Group. 

The pay TV company has accused Nexstar of conspiring to fix broadcast retransmission license fees through management services agreements with smaller station groups Mission Broadcasting and White Knight. 

Back on March 20, U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel of the Southern District of New York ruled that any financial injury DirecTV has suffered wasn't caused by any price-fixing conducted by Nexstar, Mission or White Knight. Rather, damages resulted from DirecTV’s decision not to do business, starting in 2022, with Mission and White Knight stations. 

“Here, Plaintiff’s injury — lost profits resulting from the blackouts—does not flow from that which makes Defendants’ acts unlawful because DirecTV does not allege that it paid anticompetitive rates but instead made the unilateral decision to abandon [retrans] negotiations,'' the judge wrote in his decision. “Its losses therefore flow from its own choice to exit the market.”

DirecTV will appeal the verdict through the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Cablefax originally reported this news. 

It was one of the more gruesome occurrences in Major League Baseball history -- early in the 2001 season, flame-throwing left-hander Randy Johnson's 100+ MPH fastball famously collided with a mourning dove in mid-flight. (You can see the clip here, but ornithologists should click carefully).

Twenty-three years later, DirecTV is, er, feathering its nest, as it were, by mining this famous avian tragedy for a little comedy. 

The satellite TV company already has a humorous pigeon-themed TV ad campaign rolling, tied to the sunsetting of satellite distribution. (In the spots, the pigeons lament the loss of the dishes.)

Now, DirecTV has enlisted Johnson, 60, to star in a new, whimsical ad, in which the Hall-of-Fame 6-10 pitcher, known in his playing days as "The Big Unit," turns old, obsolete satellite TV dishes into diorama's of Major League fields ("bird ballparks," as they're known), while donning a mullet wig made of millet. (Yeah, it's out there.)

"Birds deserve better," declares Johnson. Here's the ad:

Satellite-TV companies DirecTV and Dish Network have filed affidavits supporting Fubo in its antitrust suit against the sports streaming joint venture to be launched by Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery. 

"Their declarations underscore a wider concern in the pattern of anticompetitive practices by the defendants, not particular to only Fubo, that have hurt consumers," a Fubo rep told Next TV via email Thursday. 

DirecTV provided us the statement made by DirecTV chief content officer Rob Thun to the U.S. District Court in Manhattan on Monday. (This was first obtained by TheWrap.)

“DirecTV has grave concerns about the effect that the sports content joint venture between the defendants in this case will have on competition for the distribution of sports programming,” Thun said. “More specifically, the joint venture partners are offering content in a manner that they do not allow DirecTV or other distributors to offer to consumers. Rather, the joint venture partners require that DirecTV offers a large bundle of channels and do not allow DirecTV to offer a smaller sports-focused bundle of channels.”

In early February, Disney, Fox and WBD announced plans, starting this fall, to bundle their linear sports channels, ESPN included, in an as-yet-unnamed joint venture internally code-named “Raptor” and informally monikered by the media and equity analysts as “Spulu.”

Calling the JV a “sports cartel” and “borderline racketeering,” Fubo sued the JV partners on Feb. 20, contending that, among other things, that pay TV operators like Fubo have been asking the defendants to allow them to assemble genre-specific bundles just like the one the JV is proposing, only to be shot down each time. 

The Justice Department at that time also said it would examine the JV over antitrust concerns. 

On Monday, Fubo also filed a motion for a preliminary injunction of the so-called Spulu. 

According to the Fubo rep, the DirecTV and Dish declarations “underscore a wider concern in the pattern of anticompetitive practices by the Defendants, not particular to only Fubo, that have hurt consumers. We are also encouraged by the DOJ's continued investigation into the JV.

“We remain steadfast in our fight against the JV and will continue to defend against this threat of irreparable harm to Fubo and consumers more broadly as outlined in the motion,” Fubo added. “We see this as an opportunity to obtain parity of terms and rates for Fubo, which could have a very positive impact on the future of our business. We also see this as an opportunity to level the playing field of the sports streaming industry as a whole. Customers deserve choice, fair pricing and innovative products, and this is only possible in a competitive streaming market.”

DirecTV is pushing back on the Federal Communications Commission’s new “all-in pricing” rules, claiming the agency’s new mandates are built on a faulty interpretation of Section 335 of the Communications Act and that the regulator doesn't have the authority to enforce them. 

In a letter sent to the FCC last week, DirecTV said the agency’s interpretation of Section 335 is too broad — it gives the FCC the latitude to regulate “direct broadcast satellite services” for “the adoption of programing and carriage-related obligations,” such as educational shows. But it doesn't give the FCC the right to impose rules for “any regulation” that it deems to be “in the public interest.”

“Even if we agreed with the all-in pricing order’s Section 335 reasoning (which we do not), that reasoning suggests that the Commission lacks authority to impose [the order],” DirecTV outside counsel Timothy Simeone wrote. 

“In response to the argument that Section 335(b)(3) confers authority over prices, terms, and conditions only in connection with educational channel capacity, the all-in pricing order states that an all-in pricing mandate is not a regulation of prices, terms, or conditions,” Simeone added. “The Commission thus appeared to acknowledge that it would be impermissible to regulate prices, terms, or conditions of service outside of educational channel capacity.”

Last month, FCC commissioners voted 3-2 across party lines in favor of the all-in pricing order, which requires cable and satellite TV companies to “specify the ‘all-in’ price clearly and prominently for video programming service in their promotional materials and on subscribers’ bills.” 

The FCC specified that line items tied to “broadcast retransmission consent, regional sports programming, and other programming-related fees” fit into the bucket of charges regulated by the new order. The FCC broadly refers to these charges as “junk fees.“

A Federal judge dismissed DirecTV’s antitrust lawsuit accusing Nexstar Media Group, Mission Broadcasting and White Knight Broadcasting of conspiring to boost retransmission consent fees.

Senior Judge Kevin Castel of U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York said in his decision that DirecTV did not have standing under antitrust law because it did not enter into an agreement with Mission or White Knight which would have required it to pay “supercompetitive” fees.

“This ruling sets a dangerous precedent that a victim of price-fixing needs to pay the inflated price before it can make a claim in court," a DirecTV spokesman said.

Nexstar operates stations for Mission and White Knight. In 2022 DirecTV decided not to renew its retrans agreements with Mission and White Night, which resulted in nearly 1 million DirecTV subscribers being blacked out from receiving the stations’ signals via satellite, according to the judge’s decision.

While DirecTV's allegations that the defendant engaged in a price fixing conspiracy were supported and it was able to identify a an actual injury in loss of profits resulting from the blackouts, according to the decision, it is also required to be able to show that the injury was the type of injury antitrust laws were intended to prevent.

“Here, Plaintiff’s injury—lost profits resulting from the blackouts—does not flow from that which makes Defendants’ acts unlawful because DirecTV does not allege that it paid anticompetitive rates but instead made the unilateral decision to abandon [retrans] negotiations,'' the judge wrote in his decision. “Its losses therefore flow from its own choice to exit the market.”

He added that DirecTV is not a competitor with the defendant, but instead a buyer, which makes a difference under antitrust laws.

“Because ‘DirecTV has refused Defendants’ supracompetitive, price-fixed demands,’ it cannot show that its lost profits flow from that which makes defendants’ price-fixing illegal. As such, it has failed to show that it suffered “a special kind of antitrust injury,” according to the opinion.

The judge also declined to exercise jurisdiction over DirecTV’s claims under state laws.

Following DirecTV’s announcement that it would give subscribers a discount if they decide they don’t want their local TV stations as part of their pay-TV package, Dish Network said it has been offering consumers the same option for seven years.

The offers come at a time when satellite providers are losing subscribers to cord-cutting. In looking for ways to offer a more consumer-friendly price. Dish and DirecTV said subscribers who opt out of receiving their local stations would save $12 a month. Dish offers a 50-plus-channel base tier called a Flex Pack for $62.99 that can be supplemented with other packs of channels, including a local-stations package for $12. 

DirecTV publicized its “no locals” offer in response to often contentious retransmission-consent negotiations that can lead to blackouts that anger customers. In January, Tegna stations returned to DirecTV lineups after a six-week absence because of a contract impasse.

Subscribers opting out of network-affiliated stations would also lose satellite access to national programming from ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox.

“In light of recent news regarding DirecTV's introduction of its new opt-out feature for local channels, it's important to highlight that Dish has been offering this capability to customers for the last seven years,“ Dish said. ”Dish firmly believes in empowering its subscribers with the ability to customize their viewing experience according to their preferences.”  

Viewers also can add their own over-the-air antenna to the Hopper digital video recorder and record local or network shows using the program guide, Dish noted.

DirecTV’s announcement left some people who follow the TV business scratching their heads to see how they could make such an offer without violating the law or their contracts with programmers.

One industry source noted that while Dish has offered an opt-out to subscribers for years, there has been a lack of demand and it has had minimal impact on the distribution of local stations.

While customers can opt out, some broadcasters have clauses in their contract guaranteeing a certain level of penetration, which means that at a certain point, even if subscribers no longer receive the stations, the satellite operator still has to pay retransmission consent fees.

Without the stations, DirecTV and Dish cannot distribute network programming, but some network programming is available outside the satellite platform via streaming apps.

On Sunday, DirecTV announced a new plan that lets its satellite TV customers save $12 a month by “opting out” of receiving local broadcast stations, if they choose. 

In its press release, the privately controlled pay TV company explained that, “In recent negotiations with leading broadcasters, DirecTV has sought out new, more collaborative models to try to quell the number of local station blackouts and curb the rising cost for cable, satellite and streaming homes to retain their ‘free’ over-the-air stations.”

Since September, DirecTV has announced major broadcast retransmission licensing renewals with Cox Media Group, Tegna, and Nexstar Media Group, most of these agreements carved out after brief station blackouts. Is DirecTV’s new way of distributing local channels — unheard of as recently as just a year ago — something that was born amid those negotiations?

DirecTV had no further comment for Next TV Monday, but an individual close to the company's dealings said it wouldn’t proceed with such a plan if it weren’t nailed down in its distribution contracts.

Another individual familiar with the pay TV company's negotiations, a consultant, quipped, “fortune favors the brave,” expressing his disbelief that DirecTV has the contractual wherewithal established with every station across its national footprint. 

“We would argue it actually highlights the value of the broadcast stations,” a Sinclair executive told us. “Most surveys indicate that around 50% of the average viewership of the average pay TV subscriber is spent on network telecasts (be that national news or primetime, or the NFL, NBA Finals, Masters, NCAA Tournament, World Series, etc.).  So, DirecTV is essentially saying that the other 90% of a subscriber’s bill would only get you 50% of what you would normally watch.”

Also read: DirecTV’s Rob Thun Tells Tegna to Get Direct With Either the Networks or Pay TV Customers as the Latest Retrans Dispute Devolves Into Yet Another Blackout

As a DBS operator, DirecTV isn't subjected to the same FCC “must-carry” rules that cable operators are. These laws require cable operators to carry local stations in their least expensive tier.

And as one station group executive noted to us, it’s questionable as to how "groundbreaking" the scheme is. For example, DirecTV's satellite TV rival, Dish Network, has been offering — for quite some time — local broadcast channels as a $12-a-month add-on two super-skinny bundles of cable networks. 

It’s unclear as to how many DirecTV customers are impacted. Leichtman Research Group estimated that DirecTV finished 2023 with around 11.3 million remaining customers across DirecTV satellite TV, DirecTV Stream and U-verse TV. For now, the "opt-out" capability only applies to satellite TV, and it remains publicly unknown as to how many users DirecTV still serves with satellites. 

But that number is undoubtedly still millions of customers. And while they've come around to the realities of latter-stage video cord-cutting, we can also safely assume that programmers are still adamant about securing distribution in the most popular pay TV tiers for their leading networks. 

With rising retransmission costs driving up pay TV bills and network programming from local stations being simultaneously distributed through popular SVOD services including Hulu, Peacock and Paramount Plus, DirecTV and other pay TV operators are making a strong case that their customers shouldn't have to pay twice for content found on local broadcast channels. 

Traditionally, however, programmers have put stringent must-carry language into their distribution contracts, forcing operators to carry their top channels in the most popular programming bundles. 

DirecTV said it would be allowing customers to opt out of receiving their local TV stations, and pay a lower monthly rate in the bargain.

Customers who opt out of receiving local stations directly through DirecTV will receive discounts of about $140 a year or $12 a month, the pay-TV provider said.

“Consumers have been voting with their wallets for years that pay TV — as currently constructed — is too expensive and restricts their choices,” DirecTV chief content officer Rob Thun said. “Our new ‘No Locals’ package enables customers to take an important step forward in culling out certain types of content they may no longer care to watch and better balance the price they are willing to pay.” 

DirecTV’s announcement comes after a long retransmission-consent fight with Tegna. During that dispute, DirecTV suggested an arrangement based on getting programming directly from the broadcast networks and offering local stations on an a la carte basis. In a release outlining the new option, DirecTV said customers might want to drop their local channels "during non-peak programming months -- like the summer -- then resume in the fall or whenever they choose."

The owners of the broadcast networks also own many broadcast television stations, which might pose a problem for DirecTV in implementing this plan.

DirecTV, long known as a satellite company, is launching a new campaign that says dishes are for the birds and that they should be streaming their TV.

A new commercial entitled The Good Stuff features two pigeons on a rooftop who a surprised to notice a household watching "the good stuff" on DirecTV without a Dish.

The voices of the pigeons–Bobby and Frank– are being supplied by Steve Buscemi and Henry Winkler.

Also Read: DirecTV Jacks Up Stream, Satellite TV and U-Verse Prices For the Second Time This Year

“For the past 30 years consumers have trusted DirecTV to bring them their entertainment and sports both at home and on the go, and the launch of today’s campaign clearly illustrates that DirecTV is available today with or without a satellite dish,” said DirecTV CMO Vince Torres. 

“This new campaign allows the ease of use of DirecTV to take center stage, through the humor and plight of Bobby and Frank, who are among the first to notice the change and then take a clever approach to explaining it to consumers,” Torres said.

For DirecTV, streaming customers are cheaper to maintain and are more valuable to addressable advertisers.

Also Read: 38% of Advertisers Call Addressable Ads a ‘Must-Buy’ in DirecTV Survey

DirecTV introduced its Gemini streaming device in early 2023, followed by the Gemini Air in mid-2023. 

The box provides an aggregation tool that eliminates the need to switch between TV inputs and offering 4K content and the customers’ favorite third-party apps, including Amazon Prime, Max and Netflix.

DirecTV’s campaign will appear in national linear TV, including ABC and ESPN’s NBA games, NHL games on Turner and American Idol.

DirecTV will also have digital out-of-home radio spots and experiential executions.

“Showing the absence of something is tricky,” said Jason Karley, executive creative director at ad agencyTBWA\Chiat\Day LA. “So the team thought about who would miss satellite dishes the most. Who spends enough time on roofs and ledges to notice? How about two street-smart, voyeur pigeons who take issue with some great news from DirecTV.”

Cox Media Group and DirecTV said they agreed to a new multiyear carriage agreement, ending two-week blackout just before the Super Bowl began Sunday evening.

Cox owns two CBS affiliates that aired the game, KIRO Seattle and WHIO Toledo, Ohio.

The companies said they were working to restore the stations as soon as possible to DirecTV on satellite, U-verse TV and DirecTV Stream.

Restoring the Seattle and Toledo stations were a priority.

“DirecTV and CMG greatly appreciate the patience of their subscribers and viewers,” the companies said in a statement.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

“We will continue to work with broadcasters like CMG, as well as any other programmers, to align the price our customers pay with the value they can expect to receive,” DirecTV said.

The blackout affected 12 CMG stations. 

Cox Media Group said its television stations are no longer available to DirecTV subscribers because of a retransmission consent dispute.  

The previous distribution agreement expired February 2 and the dispute comes to a head a week before the Super Bowl, which is being broadcast by CBS.

CMG has 12 stations in nine markets, including CBS affiliates in Seattle and Dayton, Ohio. 

“While we’ve been signing dozens of fair-market carriage deals that bring our high-quality programming to more than 50 million viewers, DirecTV has been dropping hundreds of TV stations and depriving its customers of the local content they want and paid DirecTV for,” said Marian Pittman, executive VP of CMG. “Now DirecTV is at it again. We call on DirecTV to stop holding viewers hostage to its anti-consumer agenda.” 

Pittman said that CMG was committed to negotiating in good faith. 

DirecTV said CMG has a pattern of having retrans renewals lead to blackouts.

Also Read: Cox Stations Blacked Out to Dish Subs in Retransmission Dispute

“This is an unfortunate and all too familiar path for CMG, which pulled its signals from DirecTV in its last renewal in 2021, agreeing to restore its stations just hours before the 2021 Super Bowl. CMG has also been down on Dish since November 2022,” DirecTV said on its website.

“CMG is playing chicken with the industry, willfully ignoring the economics that its programming does not warrant a double-digit annual rate increase on top of an already exorbitant fee structure,” DirecTV said. “By pulling its stations, CMG intends to penalize its viewers twice — once when pulling the programming and again when they return it at an unwarranted higher rate — adding insult to injury.”

Last month DirecTV settled a dispute with a renewal that ended a six-week blackout of Tegna’s TV stations.

DirecTV had a three-month blackout last year with Nexstar Media Group.

After locking horns before agreeing to their last broadcast retransmission deal two years ago, DirecTV and Cox Media Group appear ready to do the ol' dance again, with the station group on Thursday evening sending out a press release accusing the pay TV operator of "attacking local journalism."

The current agreement expires on Feb. 2 (notably, after this weekend's NFC and AFC championship games.) And a blackout would impact 13 network affiliates in nine markets. Notably, only two of these affiliates are CBS, which will show next month's Super Bowl. (See the graphic below).

“CMG is proud of our commitment to investing in best-in-class local news and investigative journalism,” said Marian Pittman, executive VP of Cox, in the statement. “We’re dismayed that DirecTV is trying to force a deal that would harm local journalism and broadcast stations. This hurts consumers who rely on our high-quality local news, weather, and entertainment programming.”

Anxious to put the microphone in DirecTV's face for a reply -- "They used the word 'dismayed,' how does that make you feel?!' -- we sent a late-night email to El Segundo headquarters. We're waiting for a reply. 

DirecTV just resolved a two-month blackout with Tegna two weeks ago. As for Cox, it's been beefing with Dish since November 2022. 

Adding to the drama: Cox President and CEO Dan York used to be a top DirecTV executive. 

DirecTV followed up with this statement Friday morning: "We are working with Cox Media Group to reach a new agreement that will align the value and quality customers receive with the price they pay. Our request to Cox Media Group is simple, don’t force your viewers who are our customers, to pay an unwarranted rate increase for ‘free’ news, sports and entertainment that is widely available on local station websites, through an over-the-air digital antenna and direct-to-consumer streaming platforms."

Should a blackout occur, DirecTV said it would work with any bereaved customer in regards to their monthly bill. 

Tegna and DirecTV said they ended their six-week blackout by reaching a new long term distribution agreement.

The deal covers Tegna's 64 TV stations, which cover 51 markets. Many are NBC affiliates, and the deal came ahead of NBC's coverage of the Cleveland Browns playing the Houston Texans in an NFL Wild Card Playoff game Saturday. NFL playoff games tend to focus distributors and broadcasters on coming to a deal to end a blackout.

Also: DirecTV-Tegna Blackout, Peacock Exclusive Threaten to Block Viewers Amid the NFL’s Big Wild Card Weekend

The stations' programming will be returning to DirecTV, DirecTV stream and U-verse today, when the NFL playoffs kicked off.

Also: NFL Playoffs Lead What's On This Weekend in TV Sports Jan. 12-15 

Financial terms were not disclosed.

In a statement the two companies said they "greatly appreciate the patience of their subscribers and viewers."

Coming off a year in which seven of the top 10 most watched shows were NFL postseason games, and the other three were NFL regular-season holiday matchups, you'd think the TV/video business would prioritize unfettered access to the veritable high holy event that is pro football's Wild Card Weekend. 

But some football fans will run up against solid blocking starting Saturday. 

In Cleveland, fans have rejoiced as former Super Bowl-winning quarterback Joe Flacco, who turns 38 next week, has come off the practice squad to lead the injury-riddled Browns into a Wild Card match-up against the Houston Texans Saturday. 

But if they get their channels via DirecTV, these Cleveland viewers are going to have to scramble (or audible, depending on your choice of dumb pun) in order to see the 4:30 p.m. ET game, with local NBC affiliate WKYC off DirecTV's grid because of a retrans dispute with station group Tegna. 

While Cleveland is the most specifically impacted market, the Tegna dispute will have plenty of collateral damage for fans in distant markets. For example, DirecTV-subscribing Dallas Cowboys faithful in the Texas enclaves of San Antonio, San Angelo and Abilene currently have their Fox affiliates blacked out on DirecTV, which will affect viewership of Saturday’s game against Green Bay. 

A DirecTV rep told us Tuesday there was no news to share about the blackout, which has been going on since late November. 

Meanwhile, subscription streaming platform Peacock, which holds a walled garden of around 30 million paid subscribers, as of NBCUniversal's end-of-September count, is about to present Saturday night’s Miami-Kansas City AFC matchup exclusively, with no simultaneous NBC network broadcast outside of the participating teams’ respective home TV markets. 

The NFL is collecting an additional $110 million from NBCU to give its SVOD the exclusive window. But not all NFL and fans are happy about the game being confined to the streaming service, which starts at $5.99 a month.

DirecTV said it added Weigel Broadcasting’s Heroes & Icons digital broadcast network to its satellite pay TV platform.

Heroes & Icons has been available on DirecTV’s U-verse TV platform since 2015 and DirecTV Stream since 2021.

DirecTV also started carrying Weigel’s MeTV network earlier this year.

“This agreement provides Weigel a strong opportunity to grow its national network viewership and sponsors, while ensuring our customers continue to possess consistent, reliable access to Weigel’s local stations,” said Linda Burakoff, senior VP of content and programming at DirecTV. “We continue to work creatively with programmers like Weigel with broadcast properties to fulfill our mutual business interests in ways that consumers gain greater choice, value, and reliability they deserve.”

Heroes & Icons airs all of the original live-action Star Trek series with a Sunday through Friday night block dubbed "All Star Trek."  It also programs shows including The A-Team, Walker, Texas Ranger, The Twilight Zone, Batman, Adventures of Superman and Wonder Woman. 

“We appreciate the growing partnership we have with DirecTV that allows for our national networks, MeTV and H&I, which are established viewer favorites, to be carried on their satellite and streaming platforms for their customers’ enjoyment,” said Neal Sabin, vice chairman of Weigel Broadcasting Co.

NBCUniversal Content Distribution said it launched an augmented reality experience centered on Bravo’s Watch What Happens Live that will be available to Cox Communications and DirecTV subscribers.

Fans will be able to walk through a virtual version of the show’s Clubhouse, testing their knowledge by clicking on objects and answering trivia questions.

Fans will also be eligible to win tickets to see Watch What Happens Live.

“Cutting-edge augmented reality technology has proven to amplify viewer engagement,” NBCUniversal Content Distribution president Matt Schnaars said. “By partnering with Cox and DirecTV, we are excited to bring our loyal fans this interactive opportunity, and drive value for our distribution and advertising partners.”

Subscribers can access the Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen experience via their mobile or desktop device through a unique QR code.

The Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen experience was developed with Trigger XR.

On Thursday evening, Tegna-owned TV stations were, as expected, taken off the programming grids of DirecTV's three pay TV platforms.

Tegna counts 64 network affiliates in 51 markets, while DirecTV insists the actual tally is 66 network stations in 52 metro regions. 

“Despite months of effort, DirecTV has refused to reach a fair, market-based agreement with Tegna,” the broadcaster said in a statement. "As a result, DirecTV and AT&T U-Verse customers will lose access to NFL and college football conference championship games, as well as some of the most popular national network programming and top-rated local news. We urge DirecTV to continue to negotiate with us until a deal is reached that restores our stations to their customers.”

Also read: DirecTV and Tegna Queue Up Another Blackout Do-Si-Do

Back at DirecTV headquarters in El Segundo, Calif., the operator's top program licensing negotiator, Rob Thun, shared a deck with Next TV over Zoom.

Taking a page from a playbook that worked effectively for Charter Communications two months ago in pivotal program licensing dispute with Disney, DirecTV and Thun put together a "proposal" for Tegna to either set consumer pricing itself and let DirecTV customers decide whether they want to pay for its local channels a la carte, or let DirecTV negotiate directly with the broadcast networks itself. 

With NBCUniversal/Comcast, CBS/Paramount and ABC/Disney committing more than $2 billion a year each over the next decade to the NFL, Thun contends that station groups like Tegna are accepting spiraling reverse retransmission rates from conglomerates and passing the pain to pay TV operators.

“The broadcasters seem to not want to take the same aggressive tactics in negotiations with the networks themselves, and then they just pass the trash down the line to the pay TV providers. They assume we’re going to eat it and ultimately pass it on to our consumers. But we've hit the wall in terms of what prices our customers are willing to pay,” Thun told Next TV.

Featuring a potpourri of research including Kagan figures indicating a 270% spike in broadcast retransmission fees since 2015, Thun's deck is reminiscent of some of the “new deal” proposals put forth into the program licensing market recently by Charter CEO Christopher Winfrey and his team. It even includes a citation to the “Doom Loop,” the virtuous cycle signaling the demise of the pay TV industry that was created and published by equity analyst Craig Moffett back in May and also used by Charter in some of its recent messaging.

In the deck, DirecTV describes Tegna as a kind of serial blackout causer, involved in 275 impasses with operators since 2010 and demanding the highest retrans rates in the television industry while offering fewer programming enticements than ever to viewers. 

Asked by Next TV if his proposal was merely the kind of rhetorical mechanism often seen in an ever-increasing spiral of fee disputes between programmers and distributors, Thun said DirecTV is “dead serious” about it, conveying a similarly earnest pushed-to-the-wall vibe that characterized Winfrey's publish speaking engagements during September's Disney impasse. 

Indeed, there are a number of factors suggesting the Tegna dispute might be the point at which DirecTV digs in on retrans:

• We're already in week 13 of the NFL season, and college football's regular season is over. With audience interest dwindling in broadcast TV scripted and reality content, live sports — most specifically live NFL football — remains a key source of urgency for these kinds of disputes. 
• In terms of the remaining live football games, 21 Tegna stations are affiliated with NBC, which is also distributed via SVOD Peacock, and 16 Tegna stations are aligned with CBS, which is distributed via Paramount Plus. 
• Even the Super Bowl itself will be available for linear viewing outside its 2024 broadcast home, CBS, with Paramount Global vowing to simulcast it on Nickelodeon. 

After the football season ends, Thun said, “We’re in a different ball game, because they [Tegna] are going to be in the thick of these elections, right? Two-thirds of their footprint has elections coming up through Super Tuesday across 16 states. I think the whole advertising market, especially for the broadcaster, is expecting the soft ad market to boomerang up based on what will likely be a very contentious election cycle. And it's not going to bode well for them to be off of their largest distributors.”

Tegna is back on the rocks with DirecTV, signaling to viewers Saturday that its stations could soon be pulled off the programming grids of the pay TV operator's platforms amid failing broadcast retransmission licensing negotiations. 

The broadcaster, which owns 64 network affiliates in 14 markets, told viewers with DirecTV satellite, DirecTV Stream and U-verse TV subscriptions that they could "lose" Tegna stations starting November 30 without DirecTV agreeing to “fair, market-based” terms on broadcast retransmission licensing.

“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 released to Next TV Saturday afternoon. “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 sees it differently.

“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,” the operator said in its own Saturday statement. “Unfortunately, that’s become the industry norm as the costs for free local stations have soared more than 20% 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.”

Certainly factoring in negotiations: 21 of Tegna stations are NBC affiliates that are accessible via Peacock, while 16 Tegna outlets are CBS stations that are delivered via Paramount Plus. 

The two companies also threw down three years ago under similar circumstances. That dispute, which occurred before AT&T spun DirecTV off, lasted about three weeks. 

DirecTV has signed on, at least for this season, to be the new title sponsor of college football's Holiday Bowl, which each season matches up teams from the doomed Pac-12 and other athletic conferences who missed out on a league title and/or College Football Playoff to Downtown San Diego's Petco Park. 

In its announcement Thursday, DirecTV didn't release details for the deal (which could very well end up being a one-off, because DirecTV wouldn't even tell us whether it was a "multiyear" agreement or not). 

DirecTV follows SeaWorld, Thrifty Car Rental, Chrysler Corporation, Pacific Life and the San Diego County Credit Union among companies that have sponsored the upper second-tier bowl game. 

The 44th annual Holiday Bowl (now “DirecTV Holiday Bowl’) will kick off at 8 p.m. EST on Wednesday, December 27 at Petco Park in downtown San Diego, matching up teams from the Pac-12 and ACC.  

Like sports-focused pay TV competitor Fubo, which has signed myriad team sponsorships of late with major league franchises, DirecTV has moved aggressively into sports marketing channels of late. In August, for example, it signed deals to become official sponsors of USC and Notre Dame athletics. 

As for branding the “DirecTV Holiday Bowl,” the pay TV company is attaching its name to what is usually one of college bowl season's better second-tier matchups. Last December's game, which featured Oregon narrowly beating North Carolina 28-27, averaged 3.97 million viewers for Fox. 

“DirecTV is a respected industry leader, a sports powerhouse and an incredible brand,” Dennis DuBard, 2023/24 president of Sports San Diego, the group that produces the Holiday Bowl, said.

As Diamond Sports Group’s bankruptcy restructuring enters its eighth month, one of its key Bally Sports distribution partners weighed in Friday on the Sinclair subsidiary's request for yet another extension on a restructuring plan for its creditors. 

DirecTV said it “does not object” to a 60-day extension that would give the bankrupt regional sports network operator until late November to come up with a plan, but the pay TV operator added that it does have "concerns" about where Diamond is headed. 

"Despite more than seven months in Chapter 11, the debtors seem to have failed to shore up both the supply (team rights) and revenues (distribution) sides of their business," DirecTV said in a statement filed to a Houston bankruptcy court. 

Also Read: MLB Says Time’s Up For Diamond and Bally Sports: They Need to ‘Come Up With a Viable Plan or Liquidate,’ Baseball Tells Bankruptcy Court

Diamond lawyers, DirecTV added, “devoted most of their resources during the first few months of the cases to waging a costly battle with Major League Baseball and its teams only to lose in court and alienate MLB, one of their most important business partners, dimming their prospects for a successful reorganization.”

Diamond recently pursued a “similar tactic” against DirecTV, the pay TV company said, filing a motion seeking to make it pay full rate for channels including Bally Sports Arizona which had lost key pro team constituents in the restructuring process. 

Further, DirecTV contended, Diamond has “hardly engaged” in negotiations with DirecTV for a long-term renewal of their distribution arrangement. (DirecTV recently agreed to carry Bally Sports for another year under terms of an expired deal.)

Diamond’s “lack of progress” and the resulting “continuing uncertainty,” the satellite TV company stated, is putting “undue pressure” on leagues and pay TV partners.

“At a bare minimum, the parties in these cases deserve to know the intended and viable outcome, reorganization or liquidation, at this stage and specific path to get to any outcome and the timeline for doing so,” DirecTV added. 

Major League Baseball filed an objection on the matter of the extension two weeks ago, stating that Diamond has already had enough time to come up with a plan. 

Diamond Sports Group was set up as a subsidiary after Sinclair Broadcast Group outbid MLB and paid $10.6 billion to acquire the 19 channels that became the Bally Sports regional sports network. 

With those channels subsequently losing profitability through cord-cutting and the pandemic, cash-strapped Diamond, which was set up to manage the RSNs, entered bankruptcy in March looking to shed around $8 billion in debt. 

The subsidiary’s plan to use the leverage of Chapter 11 to force MLB, NBA and NHL teams to renegotiate their local TV licensing contracts, and in some cases give up direct-to-consumer streaming rights, has been far more challenging than anticipated. 

Separately, Diamond has sued Sinclair, looking to claw back over $1 billion it claims was “milked” from the subsidiary by its parent via mechanisms including bloated management services contracts. Diamond also objected to the repayment made to preferred equity provider JP Morgan, which is also named in the suit. 

Last week, Diamond filed a 68-page motion, objecting to JP Morgan’s attempt to have the suit dismissed. 

Also of note: Bally Sports Arizona, which lost the NBA’s Phoenix Suns, WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury, MLB’s Arizona Diamondbacks and the NHL’s Arizona Coyotes, has officially departed the programming grids of affiliated pay TV platforms over the weekend.

Canoe Ventures, the ad-tech company owned by the biggest cable companies, said it has made a deal making satellite companies DirecTV and Dish Network part of addressable ad campaigns.

The arrangement increases Canoe’s addressable footprint to 54 million homes–a bigger chunk of a shrinking pay TV universe at a time when streamers also offer addressability.

AMC Networks and Warner Bros. Discovery have signed up as the first programmers to offer this new capability to advertisers.

The satellite rivals have been working together to serve advertisers looking for addressability.

The growth of addressable advertising has been limited by less than optimal scale and difficulty in making arrangements with numerous distributors with different technology and business rules. 

Canoe said the new arrangement ameliorates those problems.

Also Read: AMC, WEtv Go Addressable In All Original Programming

“In the intricate world of MVPDs, each endpoint has distinct, and sometimes complex, nuances. We’re excited to team up with DirecTV Advertising and Dish Media to empower programmers to run addressable advertising campaigns in a more streamlined manner, with even greater efficiency and simplicity, in today’s fragmented and complicated TV ad landscape,” David Porter, CEO of Canoe Ventures, said.

Canoe is now working with Invidi, the ad-server technology company that satellite companies work with, to create an integration that allows programmers to easily execute addressable advertising campaigns across all of U.S. multichannel video programming distributors at once. 

We applaud Canoe for helping to drive scale in the addressable advertising space,” said Tim Myers, head of strategy, products, and enterprise partnerships at Dish Media. “The addition of satellite households means programmers can now offer a true national addressable solution with a unified workflow, providing more value and reach for marketers.”

“Whether your goal is to reduce waste, manage frequency or extend reach, there is no doubt that addressable advertising works,” Matt Van Houten, senior VP product, business development at DirecTV Advertising, added. “We’re looking forward to this new partnership with Canoe, which will provide programmers with more inventory and households, translating to greater value, scale and reach for marketers.”

Regional sports networks subsidiary Diamond Sports Group has filed a motion in the Houston court overseeing its bankruptcy, seeking to make DirecTV pay the full contracted rate for Bally Sports San Diego and Bally Sports Arizona, even though these channels have been stripped of their flagship pro-sports teams. 

Diamond accuses DirecTV of having exercised an “unlawful course of ‘self-help’” since July, deliberately reducing the fees it pays Diamond by a redacted amount. 

Diamond, a subsidiary set up by Sinclair Broadcast Group to manage the Bally Sports channels, said DirecTV has “no basis for withholding any portion of the payments due to it,” for reasons that are also redacted in its ”enforce stay and compel performance“ filing to a U.S. bankruptcy court on Tuesday. 

A Diamond rep sent Next TV this statement Wednesday afternoon: “This motion was filed to protect Diamond Sports Group’s contractual rights while we reorganize. DIRECTV has breached its contract with DSG’s by improperly withholding payments contractually owed to Diamond, which has satisfied its obligations under the agreement. DSG has had a long relationship with DIRECTV and intends to continue partnering with them to provide live games to fans in our regions.”

A DirecTV rep responded: "When DSG ceases to carry a team, they seem to think we should continue to pay them for the right, even as we need to pay the new rights holders to ensure continued transmission to our subscribers. That makes no sense, and it is not how our agreements with DSG work."

Also read: Bankrupt Diamond Officially Announces Bally Sports Schedules For the NHL's Panthers and Lightning 

Bally Sports San Diego has been bereft of its primary programming source, Major League Baseball”s San Diego Padres, ever since Diamond tore up the team’s local sports contract back in May. Chapter 11 leverage enables restructuring Diamond to ditch such unfavorable contracts. 

Since that time, the channel’s programming lineup has been filled with replays of NASCAR races, boxing matches and other sports events, as well as various, inexpensive-to-acquire non-live sports programming. 

Likewise, the NBA's Phoenix Suns and WNBA's Phoenix Mercury demurred on renewing their Bally Sports Arizona contracts last spring. Diamond, meanwhile, cut the MLB’s Arizona Diamondbacks loose in July. And just last week, Diamond and the NHL”s Arizona Coyotes agreed to go their separate ways. 

These days, Bally Sports Arizona is filled with the same goulash that the San Diego channel is, but Diamond still wants DirecTV to pay full rate. 

UPDATED: On Wednesday, however, one former Bally Sports Arizona employee tweeted that the channel's operations had shut down. 

This dispute comes after DirecTV and Diamond recently agreed to a short-term renewal of their overall carriage agreement, as the subsidiary continues to navigate through a very tedious restructuring process that promises to drag into 2024. 

DirecTV has begun informing customers that for the second time this year, starting Nov. 5, it will raise prices across its three pay TV platforms. 

The move comes after DirecTV’s across-the-board January price increases. 

It's the same virtuous cycle we report all the time. According to Leichtman Research Group data released Thursday, “mean reported spending” by U.S. households for pay TV has risen to $112.70. 

And as a result, fewer of us have pay TV, with penetration down to 64% of U.S. households, according to LRG, vs. 86% a decade ago. 

As for DirecTV, it issued three separate notifications for each of its platforms, outlining specific price increases:

DirecTV Stream

Starting Nov. 5, the virtual MVPD is not only upping the price of its current tiers by as much as $10 a month, it's also increasing the monthly wholesale price of Showtime (99 cents) and AMC Plus ($1). 

DirecTV Stream price changes are outlined on this landing page, which also has pricing information for "grandfathered" tiers we don't show you below. 

Notably, customers on promotional rates won't feel the pain until their promo expires. 

DirecTV Satellite

DirecTV satellite tiers are increasing by $2-$10 a month, with access to Showtime, AMC Plus and the "Sports Pack" each rising by $1. 

Satellite tier pricing increases are highlighted here. 

Also starting on Nov. 5, DirecTV said its regional sports fees for satellite are being adjusted by ZIP code "to better align with content. 

"As a result," the company added, "some customers will see no change, and others will see a slight increase (up to $2.00)."

DirecTV customers can visit this page to see what the damage looks like. 

U-verse

U-verse monthly pricing is going up by $1-$11 a month, with "broadcast TV fees" going up $1.

The U-verse fee increases can be found here. 

Nexstar Media Group and DirecTV, which temporarily called off their three-month blackout to enable DirecTV subscribers to watch NFL games on Sunday, said on Monday they completed a long-term distribution agreement.

The agreement covers returning the 176 stations owned by Nexstar and its NewsNation cable network to DirecTV, DirecTV Stream and U-verse TV.

Terms were not disclosed, as is common in these situations, but DirecTV did not appear totally pleased by the outcome.

For one thing, the deal did not include the 27 stations owned by White Knight and Mission Broadcasting that are run by Nexstar under management agreements. Those stations have been blacked out since October.

The status of those stations is the subject of a federal antitrust suit by DirecTV and a complaint to the FCC. Those stations are also blacked out on Dish Network.

DirecTV CEO Bill Morrow also released a statement lamenting the state of retransmission consent negotiations.

“Unfortunately, over the past decade-plus. access to your programming has become a battleground for networks and stations to try to drive up higher rates,“ Morrow said. “As our customers, we recognize that while you may be able to access some programming over-the-air or on a streaming service during these periods, that is not the experience you expect. 

“We understand you have a choice among your TV providers and appreciate your ongoing loyalty during this renewal,“ he added. “That’s what will enable us to offer you more choice, personalization, and further value in future programming you pay to receive in your home.“

Currently, 37 stations owned by Hearst Television are blacked out on Dish Network.

Nexstar Media Group and DirecTV said they are close to an agreement and are temporarily ending the nearly three-month blackout of Nexstar’s stations and networks in time for Sunday’s National Football League games.

“In recognition and appreciation of the continued patience of DirecTV customers and Nexstar viewers, the companies have agreed to temporarily return the signals of the Nexstar-owned stations and national cable news network NewsNation to DirecTV , DirecTV Stream and U-verse while we both work to complete the terms of an agreement," the companies said in a statement early Sunday morning.

With more than 200 stations affected by the blackout, the companies are prioritizing returning the signals of the stations showing NFL games on Sunday afternoon (Fox and CBS affiliates) and Sunday night (NBC affiliates).

No details about the financial terms of a financial settlement were disclosed and the companies are expected to make a formal announcement when all the details are ironed out.

Since the start of the Nexstar-DirecTV blackout. Disney’s networks, including ESPN, and stations, were blacked out to Charter Communications pay-TV subscribers. The dispute led to a settlement that resulted in more revenue for Disney and more flexibility for Charter to not offer certain Disney networks and to be able to resell Disney streaming services Disney Plus and ESPN Plus.

Currently, 37 stations owned by Hearst Television are blacked out on Dish Network.