Viewers across central Oregon who rely on DIRECTV for their television service can once again tune in to their local ABC and CBS affiliates after a prolonged carriage dispute kept the stations dark for nearly five months. Zolo Broadcasting has restored KOHD-ABC and KBNZ-CBS to DIRECTV and its streaming platform, effective immediately, ending a blackout that had begun on November 1 of last year.
The resolution brings relief to thousands of subscribers in the Bend market who found themselves without access to local news, network primetime programming, live sports, and other content carried on the two stations. DIRECTV customers had been unable to receive the duopoly through the satellite provider since the first day of November, leaving them to seek alternatives ranging from over-the-air antennas to competing pay-television services.
The dispute fits a pattern that has become increasingly familiar in the broadcasting industry, where local station groups and pay-TV distributors regularly clash over retransmission consent fees — the payments that distributors make to broadcasters in exchange for the right to carry their signals. When negotiations break down, the stations are often pulled from the lineup, leaving subscribers caught in the middle of a business disagreement they had no part in creating.
In Zolo Broadcasting’s case, the conflict was not limited to DIRECTV. The company had previously withheld the same two stations from DISH Network customers in an earlier, longer-running dispute. That blackout began on October 26, 2024, and stretched all the way to November 1, 2025 — a span of more than a year — before being resolved. Notably, the very day Zolo and DISH Network reached an agreement and restored service to DISH subscribers, the broadcaster simultaneously pulled the plug on DIRECTV, raising the possibility that DIRECTV’s negotiations had been ongoing in parallel but had not yet reached a conclusion.
The sequence of events reflects the increasingly contentious state of retransmission consent negotiations across the television industry. Broadcasters have grown more aggressive in seeking higher fees as traditional pay-TV subscriber bases shrink, while distributors push back against rising costs they say are passed along to consumers. Small and mid-sized markets like Bend are not immune to these pressures, and local viewers often bear the brunt of disputes between large media companies.
For central Oregon residents, the immediate practical impact of the restoration is straightforward: KOHD and KBNZ are once again available through DIRECTV’s satellite and streaming services without any action required on the part of subscribers. Those who may have made changes to their service arrangements during the blackout — such as adding antenna setups or switching providers — will now have to weigh whether to reverse those decisions.
The Bend television market, which serves a growing population of outdoor enthusiasts, retirees, and remote workers who have flocked to the region in recent years, depends on its local affiliates for emergency alerts, weather coverage, and community news. Extended blackouts on major distributors can leave segments of the population without reliable access to that information, particularly those who are less mobile or less technically inclined to seek out streaming workarounds.
With both major satellite distributors now carrying KOHD-ABC and KBNZ-CBS once again, Zolo Broadcasting’s standing carriage disputes in the Bend market appear to be resolved, at least for the time being. Retransmission consent agreements typically run for multi-year terms, meaning the next round of negotiations — and the potential for another blackout — remains a future possibility in an industry where such standoffs have become routine.
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