6 ABC/FOX & NBC Locals Go Dark On AT&T TV, DIRECTV, & AT&T TV NOW


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Latin woman looking disappointed at her laptopscreen, sitting behind her desk at the office.

Latin woman looking disappointed at her laptopscreen, sitting behind her desk at the office.Tonight 10 ABC and NBC affiliates went dark on AT&T TV, DIRECTV, and AT&T TV NOW. This blackout comes as talks between AT&T and their parent companies KHQ Incorporated, NBC Right Now, and Cowles Montana Media broke down.

Update: AT&T sent Cord Cutters News the following: “We’re disappointed to see Cowles Montana Media put our customers into the middle of its negotiations by choosing to remove its local stations from their lineups. We had hoped to avoid any unnecessary interruption and asked Cowles Montana Media to keep the stations available while we continue to negotiate. Cowles Montana Media has instead refused. Cowles Montana Media is demanding a substantial fee increase just to allow our customers to keep its stations the same as before. AT&T remains on the side of customer choice and value. Our goal is always to deliver the content our customers want at a value that makes sense to them. Local viewers can watch the same stations over the air and often online at the station websites, as well as their national broadcast network websites and mobile apps. Customers are sending a clear message that they don’t want to keep paying more for channels they no longer care as much about or that offer their shows for free over the air and often online. They deserve more choice over which channels they want to pay for, and the freedom to decide where, when and on what device they can watch their favorite programs. We’ve always fought hard on our customers’ behalf and why we’re willing to fight for them again here.”

Update 2: AT&T sent an updated list of affected channels listed below, which also includes some FOX affiliates.

“DIRECTV, KHQ Incorporated, NBC Right Now and Cowles Montana Media are in an on-going retransmission contract dispute resulting in the decision to discontinue the DIRECTV carriage of our television stations” KHQ said in a statement on its website. “The retransmission agreement with DIRECTV expired June 30th, 2019. We continue to effort good faith negotiations. To date, we have completed deals with every other satellite and cable TV provider with which we do business.”

The affiliates that went dark include:

DMA Nielsen DMA Network
Billings, MT KULR NBC
Butte-Bozeman, MT KWYB ABC/FOX/MNT
Great Falls, MT KFBB ABC/FOX/MNT
Missoula, MT KTMF ABC/FOX/MNT
Spokane, WA KHQ NBC
Yakima-Pasco-Richland, WA KNDO NBC

This news comes as AT&T recently had blackouts with Nexstar and CBS. Both of these have recently been resolved, and hopefully, this blackout will also be quickly resolved.

Cord Cutters News has reached out to AT&T for comment and will update this story as we learn more.

 

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