DirecTV/Raycom reinstate 50+ channels
September 8, 2014
By Chris Forrester
Raycom’s 53 local stations that it either owns or manages have been dark on DirecTV’s DTH service for the past 7 days, but with the all-important NFL kick-off start-time of 1pm Sunday looming, the two protagonists reached a – literally – 11th hour deal “in principle”.
The important local stations went dark on September 1 in a dispute over carriage fees paid to the station owners under somewhat complex retransmission agreements.
Indeed, DirecTV’s chief content officer Dan York is calling for the Federal Communications Commission to look at retransmission obligations. “Raycom’s intentional recent black outs of DISH, Cox and now DIRECTV customers creates an even greater sense of urgency for lawmakers to review and overhaul this anti-consumer retransmission consent process once and for all.”
Raycom Media President and CEO, Paul McTear stated, “We appreciate our viewer’s patience. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank them for their loyalty to their local stations throughout this process. We are very pleased to be, once again, serving them on the DirecTV system and will keep them informed as we work to finalize this agreement.”