Q. I have been hoping that Dish and Sinclair would reach an agreement to end their fight so I can get back my regional sports channel for the NBA season. I was reading the Sinclair web site about the fight and it has a link to your article saying Dish is missing 236 channels because of these fights. Is that really true? That’s incredible. And is there anything new in the Dish fight with Sinclair?. — Glenn, Scottsdale, Arizona.
Glenn, there is nothing new in Dish’s carriage battle with Sinclair. The satcaster (and Sling TV) have been missing the 21 Sinclair-owned, Fox-named regional sports channels since July 26, 2019 due to the disagreement over fees. Sinclair last year also blacked out the channels on the live streamers Fubo TV, Hulu Live and YouTube TV in separate fee fights. You can read my latest update on these battles here.
Sinclair has created a lengthy web page offering its view of the various disputes. In the list of Q&As, the company says the following:
“Dish customers across the country are frustrated. Currently, Dish is without at least 236 channels due to 8 different carriage battles, which you can read about here.”
As you note, the link takes you to an article I wrote on December 5, 2020 that says “Dish is missing 236 channels due to eight different carriage battles.” However, since that article was published, Dish has settled its disputes with Nexstar and Cox Media/Apollo, and started a new one with Capitol Broadcasting. So the current total of missing channels due to carriage battles is actually 61, not 236.
I have updated the article over the last month to reflect the changes. I appreciate Sinclair’s recognition of my work, but the company might want to update its page to say Dish has lost 236 channels, not that it’s missing 236 channels. We’ll still get the point that Dish has been involved in numerous fee fights, far more than any pay TV provider.
Update: Dish has settled with Mission Broadcasting. As of January 29, Dish is missing 33 channels.
Glenn, hope that helps. Happy viewing, and stay safe!
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We recently cancelled our contract to return to DirecTV because of the RSN carriage dispute. As long as HULU Live had the RSN’s during baseball season we were semi-content with Dish. Then Dish got into another dispute with Nexstar and we lost two local channels…one of which, our CBS affiliate, is our go-to channel for local news. Finally, Dish seems to be offering a multitude of obscure channels of which we had no interest in paying for.
I will give them credit though…their customer service and prices far outweigh DirecTV. But in the long run, especially with staying home duing the pandemic (and Atlanta Braves baseball), DirecTV suckered us back!
At the time we went to Dish we were told by customer service the RSN dispute would be short-term. Hah!! Wish I had known about the TV Answer Man website back then…could have saved us alot of hassle and money!
I have been a long time sub to the Answer Man, and is one reason that I have stayed w/ Direct through times when I was fed up with price increases