Filed at 9:00 a.m. EST on March 3, 2009
Univision Communications Inc. has reached a multiyear retransmission-consent agreement with leading satellite provider DirecTV.
The deal, terms of which were not disclosed, covers the network feeds of Univision, sister broadcast service TeleFutura and cable network Galavision. In addition, it encompasses Univision owned-and-operated stations, as well affiliated stations owned and run by Entravision Communications Corp., Equity Media Holdings Corp. and Fisher Communications, Inc.
UnivisionSources familiar with the deal indicate that Univision 's carriage contract with DirecTV had expired at year-end, but the parties continued to negotiate, culminating with this agreement.
The deal with DirecTV marks Univision's second major retransmission-consent pact. Just after the turn of the year, the leading Spanish-language media holder in the U.S. -- which last week confirmed that it had issued pink slips to about 300 employees in the face of the faltering economy -- announced it had struck a similar accord with the nation's largest distributor, top cable operator Comcast.
