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Local TV stations charge us a monthly fee per customer to carry their stations. These stations are allowed to blackout their channel if we don’t agree to pay them increasingly higher fees.
They do this to get you to consider switching to another provider. They are hoping that this will pressure us to give in to their demands for big fee increases, which raises your bill.
There have been a record number of stations who have temporarily pulled their programming from viewers. We work with more than 1,000 stations every year and are willing to pay a fair price. However, these station fees (paid by you as part of your monthly bill) are at an all-time high, so we are negotiating hard to ensure we keep your bill as low as possible.
January 2020
fuboTV had to drop Disney-owned FOX networks for 7 months due to Disney’s high fees.
January 2020
Hearst blacked out the signals to 34 stations for two days, which they had also done to DIRECTV’s customers for a week in 2017.
January 2020
22 FOX Regional Sports Networks left fuboTV when they couldn’t come to an agreement on rising costs.
January 2018
Hearst cut the signal to their station when this small provider wouldn’t agree to their high fee demands.
March 2017
33 stations were pulled by Hearst for almost 2 months when DISH wouldn’t agree to Hearst’s demands to double their current rates.
September 2019
FOX blacked out many cable networks and 17 stations. FOX is demanding big rate increases and DISH offered an extension but was turned down. “FOX had nothing to lose and consumers had everything to gain by leaving its channels up,” DISH said. “Instead, FOX chose to harm its viewers.”
July 2019
AT&T and DIRECTV customers in 14 markets lost their CBS and The CW signals for 20 days. AT&T referred to CBS as a “repeat blackout offender” who regularly threatens to remove signals to get higher fees.
July 2019
Meredith pulled 17 popular stations for over 2 months, even after DISH offered to keep the channels up while they reached a deal.
July 2019
Nexstar blacked out 120 stations from AT&T and DIRECTV for 8 weeks because AT&T wouldn’t agree to their demands for, “… the largest increase that AT&T has ever seen from any content provider.”