Cox Media Stations blacked out to DirecTV subscribers

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; Jacksonville, Florida; 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.

“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. Yahoo