After failing to reach a deal before tonight’s deadline, Dish customers are now without TEGNA locals. The channels affected are 64 TEGNA locals, including those in Denver, Washington DC, San Diego, Hartford, Tampa, Jacksonville, and others.
This does not affect those with Sling TV, which only carry NBC and FOX owned-and-operated channels.
Brian Neylon, group president, Dish TV said in a statement:
“We made a fair offer to keep Tegna stations available to our customers, but Tegna rejected it, forcing the removal of its channels. Tegna is looking to sell its stations to the highest bidder and is simply trying to exploit Dish customers as a way to get the maximum price and further fatten their wallets.”
A spokesperson for TEGNA told The Streamable:
“DISH has refused to reach a fair, market-based agreement with us based on the competitive terms we’ve used to reach deals with numerous other providers that reflect the current market. While DISH is one of our smaller distributors, we regret any inconvenience for any of our customers, and hope that DISH will come back to the table to get a deal done to return our valuable programming to their system.”
Last year, TEGNA local affiliates were dropped from DirecTV and AT&T TV for ~18 days, before the two sides were able to reach a deal. Dish Network is currently in a carriage dispute with Sinclair Broadcast Group, which has been in extension since Mid-August.