Nexstar, Hawaiian Telcom Announce Multi-Year Deal Ending One Blackout; DIRECTV Still Without Nexstar-Owned Channels
As you might have heard, the country’s largest local station owner Nexstar has been embattled in a number of carriage disagreements in recent weeks. The major one is with DIRECTV, which dropped over 200 channels from its satellite service as well as its live TV streaming platform DIRECTV STREAM.
While Nexstar’s collective broadcasting beef continues, it has resolved at least one of its disagreements… mostly. The station owner and Hawaiian Telcom announced that they have reached a comprehensive multi-year distribution agreement covering Nexstar’s three local television stations serving Hawaii, national cable news network NewsNation, and the company’s digital network Rewind TV.
The deal is a follow-up after the island telecom company was forced to pull stations earlier this summer after a carriage deal between it and Nexstar expired with no new agreement in place.
Nexstar and Hawaiian Telcom did not disclose the financial terms of the agreement, but despite the fact that there is at least some resolution on the matter, the bad blood between the two organizations will likely continue in some form. Hawaiian Telcom filed a complaint with the FCC just two weeks ago with amendments this week ahead of the agreement, but Nexstar reportedly imposed several new conditions at the last minute, including a requirement that Hawaiian Telcom drop its original complaint and would never file another FCC complaint against Nexstar again. Despite the agreement, Hawaiian Telcom is not required to withdraw its amended complaint.
Nexstar has been dealing with a mess of its own making for months. In March, DIRECTV filed a federal antitrust lawsuit against Nexstar, claiming the company colluded with independent station owners Mission Broadcasting and White Knight Broadcasting to manipulate retransmission fees, leading to a blackout of several ABC, CBS, FOX, and NBC affiliates across the United States. DIRECTV claims Nexstar violated a federal law that prohibits independent broadcasters from owning stations that reach more than 38% of the country. Nexstar’s involvement, DIRECTV alleges, makes it a de facto owner of TV stations with a reach of 70% of households in the United States.
The problems have continued all the way to this month: earlier this week, DIRECTV sent a letter to the FCC regarding Nexstar’s continued station blackout, accusing Nexstar of expanding its ongoing station blackout to include The CW’s streaming feeds that Sinclair Broadcast Group provides for its stations on DIRECTV STREAM. Nexstar became the majority owner of The CW last fall.
The satellite and streaming provider is also accusing Nexstar and of dragging “into its dispute new viewers of a competing broadcaster against their will and regardless of DIRECTV’S agreements to serve these viewers.”
DIRECTV alleges that Nexstar has threatening to remove channels from a cable or satellite provider or followed through leading to their stations being blacked out on certain platforms seven times in less than a year.
The bitter carriage dispute has led to the largest blackout in pay-TV history, with 160 Nexstar-owned stations removed from the program guides of DIRECTV satellite, U-Verse, and DIRECTV STREAM, as well as another 40 stations owned by Mission and White Knight.
As one door slowly creaks closed, another one remains open, and though Hawaiian Telcom and Nexstar have their carriage agreement in place, it’s just one of many fires for Nexstar to put out. While such blackouts and carriage disputes are much rarer than they used to be, courtesy of the rise of streaming, Nexstar seems committed to keeping the tradition and all of its bad blood alive.
DIRECTV STREAM
DIRECTV STREAM is a live TV streaming service, which is essentially the streaming version of the DIRECTV service. All packages include local channels and at least 31 of the top 35 cable channels. New subscribers can get a free Gemini streaming device from the company, in which case the service is called “DIRECTV via Internet.”