TV Answer Man, we have not had our channel 9, CBS station on our Dish now for a long time. Is there any hope this thing will end this week? We can’t wait any longer and we might have to switch to DIRECTV. — Joy, Fairfax, Virginia.
Joy, today marks the dubious two month anniversary of the Dish-Tegna carriage feud that has left Dish without Tegna’s 64 network affiliates including your local CBS station, WUSA-TV. When the fee fight began, I commented here that I didn’t think it would last longer than a month. However, both sides seem more intransient than ever and there’s no end in sight to the impasse.
What has happened since the dispute started? Two things:
1. Both Dish and Tegna have filed complaints with the Federal Communications Commission, charging each other with acting in ‘bad faith’ in the negotiations. That basically means that each company is alleging the other is not trying to settle the fight and instead has an ulterior motive in prolonging it.
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Dish says Tegna is trying to ramp up its carriage fee to improve its company’s value as it pursues a buyer. (Tegna has said it’s open to selling the company.) Tegna says Dish is purposely not negotiating in good faith because it wants to save money during the blackout. (Dish doesn’t have to pay Tegna while it doesn’t carry its stations.)
We don’t know if either claim is legitimate and the FCC has yet to act on either complaint.
2. Dish and Tegna continue to accuse each other in social media posts of not playing fair.
“We understand your frustration, as we are just as frustrated, that you are being put in the middle of this ongoing TEGNA blackout. TEGNA, unfortunately, wants to extend this channel blackout to make our customers upset in order to get more money in this deal,” Dish’s Twitter customer support team tweeted last night.
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“We understand your frustration with the continued disruption with your @DISH service. Unfortunately, DISH is refusing to reach a fair, market-based deal with us, despite us offering competitive terms that we have used to reach deals with other providers,: Tegna’s Twitter customer service team also tweeted last night.
The statements are intended to win support among Dish customers who are missing some of their favorite channels. But there’s no indication that it’s working for either side. Most customer social media posts blame both companies for the blackout.
The TV Answer Man will continue to monitor this dispute and report back here if anything changes. But as of this morning, I don’t see Dish and Tegna reaching a deal before the Christmas holiday.
Have a question about new TV technologies? Send it to The TV Answer Man at swann@tvpredictions.com. Please include your first name and hometown in your message.
— Phillip Swann
Thank you for the update.
It should be possible to receive WUSA-9 with a good indoor antenna in Fairfax.
Keep up the good work.
Lucky you. No go in an apartment with window facing tall trees.
Dish I lost my WZZM13 Grand Rapids channel about 2 months ago. Will we get that channel back anytime soon?? Thank you. Leacy. Huntley. Twin Lake, Michigan
I was not aware of how many stations/sites are involved with this blackout. It appears to me Tegna is not looking at it from a $ view. They are not receiving any due to the blackout. The local TV station ability to sell local advertising should be based on viewer base. No adds, no $. Tegna may be wanting to sell, but why would anyone buy when they are losing $. I have gone from over the air to Direct, to Cable, to Dish. I am looking at Direct TV streaming, but it appears Tegna has dropped them now. Tegna’s mission statement to serve the community does NOT ring true. What can the FCC do to resolve this issue? I have tried to communicate with the local TV station and with Tegna to leave comments, but no path. I just want my network back. I don’t want to get ripped off. Can we just go back to the old rate?
Congress should have fixed this long ago. The problem is that Congress passed a law giving the local stations a legal monopoly over network programming in their “Designated Market Areas”, but they didn’t regulate the rates that satellite TV companies have to pay the local stations to carry their signals – which is ridiculous. Their should be a compulsory copyright / retransmission fee per subscriber, set by Congress – because these stations are using public radio spectrum under license.
Either that, or better idea repeal the monopoly altogether. It’s infuriating that I have the right to subscribe to any newspaper that I want, no matter where I live in this country, if I don’t like the local news source, but legally I cannot get my network programming from anywhere except my local station – no matter how poorly run. Horribly anti-consumer and un-American rule.
P.S. Write to your Congressperson and Senators, because it’s going to take a change in the law (the Satellite Home Viewer Act, as amended) to fix this ridiculous mess.
Get the government out of the business of enforcing franchise boundaries for the networks. Let the consumers decide. So what if I want to get my network programming from a different city, or two or more cities? What’s next, if I don’t like the service at my local McDonalds, they’re going to make it illegal for me to drive to the next one to get a Big Mac??
Give the consumers the freedom to choose – the overwhelming majority will no doubt want their local stations for the local news anyway – but some will also want the stations from their original hometown, or a big city, etc. But, with the legal monopoly power gone, these stations will have actual competition and incentive to make their retransmission rates reasonable and fair.
What does the FCC say?
Nothing yet.
TEGNA should get out of the business. Now they are threatening Verizon. FCC better step in soon.
Agreed, I believe the Olympics and NFL should break their contract since they will be loosing a huge swath of their customer base based on a dual greed model.
The FCC controls all the over the air stations “OTA”. I think that the FCC require any and all cable, streaming or other providers carry the OTA stations for free, their source of income is based on advertising. The cable/streaming providers are limiting the effectiveness of the adds that someone paid for. The Direct, Dish, Cable network companies are limiting the adds that were paid for. The TV stations sell adds based on the coverage they can provide. The channels that are not OTA can be charged or depending on what the customer is willing to buy. All the non-OTA channels like CNN, MSNBC, FOX News, for example, could be part of a package and charged accordingly. The Direct, Dish, and Cable network sell their services and charge to provide many channels not provided otherwise. I should be able to add or subtract from any package. My provider gives more channels than I want so I just don’t list them on my guide, my choice.
The FCC has to follow the boundaries set by the law.
I understand that DISH does not have to pay Tegna fees during their dispute. I just called DISH to find out if my monthly billing is being reduced by whatever proportionate amount. The answer was NO. My family generally watches the local NBC affiliate at least 50% of our viewing time over DISH. I certainly understand that I can’t expect a 50% discount, but even if it works out to .05 cents, I want it. Not fair. On to the FCC….
If you push dish hard enough they will give you an account credit. It’s small, like 5.99 but it’s the principle to me, why should I pay you 12.99/m if you aren’t giving me what I paid for. Additionally, if dish is saving money by not having to pay TEGNA during this time, then that money should come back to the customers who currently pay for it.
Correct, I call each month and they give me like 5 bucks, not much but we are paying $12.00 a month for locals.
Either Dish rep lies to you or they didn’t know. I called before I received my next bill after having a local channel cut. I told them I would not pay for something I was not getting. They cut $5 off my monthly bill for the channel lost. I thank Jesus them for that however the very next month when I got my bill my bill went back up $5. I called them and asked me why. The rep could or only would say I got my $5 off. I finally got him to say they had gone up $5 on the package I was getting before the add-ons I have. I figured it out before I actually called. He just didn’t want to say it. I told him since they were. It a able to get the money from my local channel part of my bill they just decided to go up on my package bill ($5). That’s exactly what they did. Dish or anyone of the others capable companies want to lose. So I wonder who is really at fault here. They think they can satisfy you by not charging you for something then turn around and raise the cost of another.
WE HAVE TWO ELEPHANTS TRYING TO PUSH EACH OTHER AROUND AND THE CONSUMER GETS STEPPED ON IN THE PROCESS
This is another case of pure corporate greed. After nearly 2 years of Covid keeping me inside elderly and isolated….we shouldn’t be treated this way. What good is The FCC if it won’t do something about this. I’m just so tired of this selfish, greedy corporations and paying taxes for facilities like FCC who doesn’t do their job!!!!
Don’t we as customers have any rights to switch without being penalized to Direct or whatever we choose since Dish isn’t holding up their end of the bargain to give us what we signed up for in the beginning?? Juts too wrong!!!
My local abc channel in Sacramento has been out for months, and it’s the channel Jeopardy & Wheel of Fortune comes on
When i made the switch from DIRECTV to dish, the brochure listed ALL local channels. Dish is hold the viewers hostage to a cotract. We can’t get free from, at the end of this contract we are gone,and telling everyone that is thinking about dish to steer clear
Maybe they should give us a reduction in our monthly bill since they have taken stations away!! Almost three months now. Get your act together.
I contacted DishNetwork a few weeks ago due to loss of local channel. They are giving me a bill reduction of $5.00 per month. That does not take care of my complaint. I want local channels back. But think about this $5.00 per month for 3 million customers amounts to $15,000,000 per month that they are still collecting from customers. Sounds like a class action lawsuit waiting to happen.
You need to know that the $5 monthly reduction is only one month at a time… you must contact them every month to ask for this reduction. They will not do it every month on their own! Everyone needs to know this!
It’s not $5 a month. When I called, they said they would give me a 1 time reduction of $5.
Yep my $5 reduction was just one month & I had to call 2x to get it. So ridiculous this has gone on this long
I wish they would hurry up and reach a deal cause I’ve been without my channel 13 local news for about two months now! That was our favorite local news! Ridiculous!
We are without our local NBC affiliate. Both the Winter Olympics and the Super Bowl are on NBC this year. I would think NBC and the other networks needs to get into this fight. However, maybe NBC is the smart one here offering their Peacock streaming service as the alternative and cutting out both Tegan and Dish.
This is RIdiculous!! Is this going to be resolved before the Super Bowl? If not I will be dropping Dish!
Now Tegna is doing the same thing to Verizon Fios customers! They must be doing it to different providers!
TEGNA bought the franchises when OTA was failing, this was their plan the whole way. Dish also seems to feel the bottom line before they can hear their customers scream.
Dish charges us $12.00 a month to watch “free” OTA programming. They tell me that they will not give me a break either, so a new antenna is going on the old analog antenna tomorrow and DISH is losing that 12 bucks.
I hope they bitch, I have missed enough already, It is a bad time to do this kind of thing.
I am missing some great programming because of this crap now for 2 months. Why can’t DISH bring in programming from another ABC and NBC source? I get my feed from Jacksonville. Why can’t we get it from Tampa Bay or Orlando? BTW, trying to stream and stream ABC, as an example, costs a few bucks. DISH should do something@
Just returned to our winter home and restarted our dish service. Asked if we wanted local channels. we agreed not knowing what was going on. Let’s go dish! Refund our fee or get negotiating in good faith
Even if NBC comes back to dish I will never ever watch anything on their channel. This Tegna should be fought in legal court. Missed a lot of football games because of them. Never watch another program from NBC
I called Dish and they installed the USB OTA adapter and were going to install an antenna for free as well. Ended up using my own old attic one and I now get WUSA on my Hopper 3.
wait, you can use an antenna on the hopper?
3 months and counting 🙁
Rural area west of Spokane, WA, and haven’t had CBS station (KREM) for a couple of months with DISH service. DISH says provider, TEGNA, is unfairly overpricing. Tonight, 1-23-2022, the ABC station is saying they will be off the air, also due to a “carriage” issue with DISH. What’s going on? Are both of these TEGNA or is DISH being singled out? I’m short on options: DIRECT TV can’t get a satellite connection from my place, and I don’t get much signal from an antenna. DISH was fine for the 12 years I’ve been here.
Tegna’s dispute with Dish in just PURE GREED you at Tegna are BIG …SOBs all you are interested in is $$$$$$$$$$ shame on you
Dispute is over! All stations restored.
Restored….for now. If Dish drops a local channel one more time, they will lose one more customer.