Several days after Dish claimed that the broadcaster refused to come to the table to negotiate a solution to its week-long retransmission consent impasse, Hearst Television denied those accusations, adding that Dish’s own stubbornness is the main roadblock to a deal.
Dish said in a video message to customers last week that it has been waiting and willing to go back to the table to hammer out a deal and bring back Hearst’s 33 stations, but the broadcaster has refused. Dish said it was willing to take a deal similar to one DirecTV reached with the broadcaster in January. That was somewhat self-serving in that given volume discounts, it is likely less than what Dish was paying previously because DirecTV has more than 20 million customers and Dish 13.7 million.
While Hearst has kept quiet after the Dish accusation, it broke its silence Tuesday in an open letter to Dish customers.
“Dish has suggested that Hearst Television has been unwilling to negotiate. This is simply untrue,” Hearst said in the letter. “As we have said to Dish all along, we remain ready and willing to conclude a deal promptly.”
For the full story go to Multichannel.com.
(Photo via Dave L.'s Flickr. Image taken on Feb. 6, 2017 and used per Creative Commons 2.0 license. The photo was cropped to fit 3x4 aspect ratio.)
