DISH Customers in 27 Markets Lose Access to Hearst-Owned Channels in New Retransmission Dispute

Cable customers must feel like they’re walking through a minefield these days. There’s seemingly no way of knowing when channels might disappear from cable services, and new disputes can pop up overnight with no end in sight.

DISH customers are hoping the latest dispute between their service provider and network owners is a brief one. DISH users in 27 markets across the United States are losing access to 37 channels owned by Hearst Television. The channels are mostly local broadcast affiliates of ABC, CBS, The CW, and NBC, as well as MyNetworkTV. Thus far, it appears subscribers to DISH’s live TV streaming service Sling TV are unaffected by the dispute.

The reason these channels have gone dark for DISH customers is quite standard on both sides. DISH says that Hearst is demanding unreasonable retransmission fees from it and that if it were to pay those fees it would have to pass the costs onto its users.

“Hearst continues to raise its prices despite its declining viewership and lower-quality content,” said Gary Schanman DISH Network EVP in a statement. “Demanding higher rates for the same entertainment and news just doesn’t make sense, especially as Hearst’s content is widely available on other platforms. This hurts our customers in their pocketbooks and their ability to watch the programming and content they want. Unfortunately, Hearst, like many other programmers, expects DISH and our customers to foot the bill.”

Meanwhile, according to the New York Post Hearst told DISH subscribers that “We have made significant investments to deliver top-tier programming to our viewers and Dish is seeking the right to carry our stations at below market rates, which is neither fair nor reasonable.”

The schism marks yet another high-profile removal of channels from a large swath of pay-TV customers. On Aug. 31, nearly 20 Disney-owned channels were pulled from Spectrum cable plans in a similar carriage dispute, which ended on Monday, Sept. 11. DIRECTV and DIRECTV STREAM customers in over 100 markets have been without local broadcast affiliates owned by Nexstar since early July, and no resolution is in sight in that case.

Such disputes unfairly place customers in the middle of multi-million (or billion) dollar companies, but they’ll only become more common as pay-TV continues to lose customers to streaming. Check out a list of live TV streaming services that carry local channel affiliates here.

Which Channels Are Blacked Out Thanks to Hearst-Dish Retransmission Dispute?