Q. I am tired, very tired of the blackout of my Fox sports channel on Dish. Do you think it will come back soon? Do you think Dish and Fox are close to getting this over with? I want my Brewers back! — Reg, Milwaukee.
Reg, on July 26, both Dish and its live streaming service, Sling TV, lost 22 different Fox Sports regional channels (including your Fox Sports Wisconsin, which carries the Milwaukee Brewers games) due to a disagreement over how much they should pay Fox to carry them.
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The blackout has sports fans irate because the Fox Sports regionals have the exclusive rights to carry the local broadcasts of dozens of professional teams. (You can see the list of affected channels here.)
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When the dispute began, I predicted that Dish would not get serious about renegotiating a new agreement until September when viewership traditionally rises. (August is a vacation period for many consumers who consequently watch less television during the month.)
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Why?
The satellite TV service is keen on reducing its programming spending. Therefore, it was willing to trade some subscriber defections for an entire month of not paying for the regional sports channels. It’s that simple.
But now it’s September. School’s back. Vacation is over. And TV viewership will go up. If the Fox Sports blackout continues much longer, more and more Dish and Sling subscribers will drop their service.
So I think it’s highly possible that talks between Dish and Sinclair, the new owner of the Fox Sports channels, will intensify this week. And who knows? Maybe they will even reach an agreement.
It’s more likely the dispute will stretch into the middle of the month. These negotiations are never simple. But I’m hopeful that we’re closer now than we were even a week ago.
Reg, hope that helps. Happy viewing!
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— Phillip Swann
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I doubt very seriously that Dish and Sinclair will reach a new carriage deal this week, or ANY week. It may be another year or two before that ever happens.
I need to see my Grizzlies basketball this season. It’s carried by Fox Sports Southeast. These Fox Sports stations carry lots of basketball coverage. If they aren’t back by preseason, I’m finding another provider.
I’m upset with dish over fox sports networks I pay for television for sports only I’m on disability for multiple sclerosis an all get is post about people pay for channels that doesn’t won’t them or cost of sports well my friend don’t watch sports has no sports channels paying 64$ a month I pay double that now until 2 years up then go up in price so why the lies an blame sports watchers for price increases is unfair to me also they are posting how much sinclair pay 10.2 billion for those fsn network but not posting how dish spent 12 billions $ on T-Mobile an sprint merger while we out of viewing our local sports channels this is unfair to me I’m not stupid they are making money during this outage I can’t go with out watching Dallas Mavericks games tx ranger game now are not in race for post season I can handle few more days but not when basketball start help I’m stuck under contract another 13 months can’t afford pay switching or pay for any internet to stream thanks
Because of the Fox dispute, we are thinking about changing companies. We are in a bad situation in that we can only get Satellite TV. We have been with Dish for 25 years and hate to switch.
It was just the regional Sports Channels and now last night we noticed that FS! and Big10 channel are gone also.
Will we change and then have the same problem with Direct TV?
With Dish we also can get our local over the air channels on the guide through the receiver. Does Direct TV also have that option?
its time to cut the cable I am with Dish was with Directv had same thing with them cutting WGN and other channels. And what are we paying for 90 percent content is shopping channels or old reruns is this really worth the constant rising cost or a service that can not be delivered