Dish tonight could lose 12 local channels in seven markets due to a programming dispute with their owner, Morgan Murphy Media.
Update, Tuesday, January 25, 5:14 a.m. – The two sides apparently are still in negotiations with the channels still available in Dish’s lineup. Dish’s web site, DishPromise.com, includes this message: “We are still working to reach a fair long-term deal to avoid any service interruption.” The TV Answer Man will update this story when we receive more information.
Update, Thursday, January 27: The stations now say the temporary agreement will end on Friday at 7 pm ET.
Update, Friday, January 28: See Dish Faces New Deadline For 12 Stations
The stations over the weekend posted a viewer alert advising Dish subscribers that they could lose their signals if a new agreement is not signed by 7 p.m. ET tonight.
“The WISC-TV carriage agreement with DISH expires at (7 p.m. ET) Monday, January 24. While we wish to avoid a disruption in your DISH service, without an agreement or extension, DISH could choose to remove our programming from its lineup,” states the notice posted by WISC-TV, the CBS affiliate in Madison, Wisconsin.
The seven markets affected by the dispute are Joplin, Missouri, Spokane, Washington, Yakima, Washington, Kennewick, Washington, Victoria, Texas, LaCrosse, Wisconsin, and Madison, Wisconsin.
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Dish has yet to issue a statement in response to the Morgan Murphy Media posting. But the satcaster may be a bit busy trying to settle at least a dozen other carriage disputes that have left more than 100 channels missing in its lineup, including 64 Tegna-owned locals.
The Dish-Morgan Murphy fight has been brewing for several months. Morgan Murphy threatened to remove its signals from Dish last October, but the two companies signed a short-term agreement to allow negotiations to continue.
Update Monday: Dish’s Twitter customer service team posted this today:
“We don’t understand why Morgan Murphy Media has chosen to put our customers in the middle of its negotiations. We are still working to reach a fair long term deal to avoid any service interruption.”
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Ergan won’t be held for ransom by these assclown broadcasters who want to feed from BOTH ends of the pile.
WHEN we got into BS from broadcasters (especially since you could throw a rock and hit their towers) WE just “included” a local antenna and hi isolation combiner and the customers experience was seamless !!
WITH MANY DIFFERENT WAYS to watch “local tv” which ONLY OLD TROLLS WATCH in any event…THE days of broadcaster “fee fights” are going OUT THE WINDOW faster than u no what thru a GOOSE !!
Add to THAT basic cable IS ON DEATHS DOORSTEP and the INTERNET (ya like THIS article) is FAR MORE appealing then watching 20 min per hour of OLD TROLL medicare commercials and the like) !!
Makes great news (for the desperate) but the REALITY IS…NO
ONE
REALLY
CARES !! bubye networks !! SEE YA !!
Surprisingly, I agree with you about locals, hardly ever watch them. But…. as you realize the majority of subs do, many will cancel if they can’t get it from Dish. Being a sports fan, I stay away from Charlie
Actually Dish bean counters have weighed the risk of dropping Regional Sports Nets vs the potential loss of subscribers.
Dish is willing to take the risk.
Apparently the subscriber loss isn’t all that significant.
With regard to local network affiliates, customers complain about not having them for short periods of time. Eventually, the customers adjust and lose interest in the channels and go to other services to be entertained.
old trolls?
Ok, let’s step back from the stealth bigotry of those you think are too old to occupy the planet.
That aside, it isn’t the age of viewers that keeps network tv and network affiliates alive. It is the FCC and the highly paid lobbyists who represent the networks and the National Association of Broadcasters.
Those two groups are mostly responsible for keeping over the air networks alive.
I’m one of those “old trolls” who has virtually zero interest in the crap networks are showing today.
Now, Dish has been in a retransmission consent dispute with Tegra Broadcasting for over 3 months. Dish has no contract with the local NBC affiliate. Do I care? Nope..
However, as a dish subscriber, I’m paying for a broadcast signal I can not view.
It is what it is.
Good way to lose alot of good customers.
If you take away all the Good stations, what would they do if we quit paying our bill until you got this all worked out?? Maybe then they would get it worked out Sooner!!! Poor way to treat your long time customers..
Everytime you call they blame each other. So why call, doesn’t get you anywhere.
We lost NBC in our area several months ago and it’s still not worked out. Paying for something That I am not getting
I agree with you.i have had Dish for alot of yrs.If this happens I’m calling and cancelling and demanding all my money back.
Dish, as with other large companies, has employees that assess risk.
The loss of subscribers is minimal.
And the numbers prove that out.
Our market hasn’t had access to our NBC affiliate for 4 months. I haven’t missed it a bit..
Quite frankly, I am thinking Dish and Tegra may never hammer out an agreement.
DISH needs to stop blaming everyone else for their problems. They need to learn to negotiate or pay what Tegna wants. We’ve been without NBC for almost a year now. Dish bill is over a $100 a month and can’t get local channels! Charlotte, NC area.
Can’t get local channels is not accurate.
Only one channel of the 14 local channels is in dispute..
Barry
Your 100 per month would over 120 per month if Dish caved into NBC’s outrageous pricing demands.
Dish does need to lower their fees, a bunch! However, I’ve never understood why the rebroadcasters pay the local stations anything. They take a local station’s signal and dramatically increase its coverage area thereby increasing the value to the local advertisers. I think the local stations and the networks should pay the rebroadcasters for extending their programming to a larger audience.
Still waiting for msg on dish..been 10 years now…
That’s a dead deal.
Just recently, Dish dropped NESN. It’s last RSN..
RSNs are dying
Their value is well under the cost to subscribers..
Regional Sports Nets over priced themselves thinking they were a vital part of channel lineups. Virtually all of their owners, insisted on the channels being on the most basic tier of channels. Yet, they demanded premium channel per subscriber rates. Dish took a look at each of the viewership numbers and discovered that a majority of subscribers did not view the channels often enough to justify the price to the subscribers. So dish went with the approach that RSNs should be either on a premium tier or on an a la carte offering.
RSNs rejected both ideas.
If you want RSNs, subscribe to DirecTV or a streaming service..
Dish is about to lose some channels – that’s not the half of it!
Do you find it as strange as I do, the Dish upper echelon folks think nothing about failing to live up to their end of the bargain – supplying the channels that I PAY FOR. It won’t be long before my family will have had (being treated like crap) enough and there won’t be any “cable cutting”, never mind we will be removing the entire Dish Platform from our house and parking it on the curb.
Want this dispute to get finalized quickly. We like our local channels and are tired of not being able to see our programs. Makes you want to change to a different company.
Who is we?.
According to viewership trends and ratings, the percentage of tv households which significantly view network affiliates is dropping.
For example, overall viewership of over the air networks is down some 25% since 2010
We brought in our fibre optics company that also has TV. They have different plans starting with 13 local channels. I took that for now, but could upgrade and change after my contract with Dish is over.
You two dumb jerks need to retire and let someone with a brain figure it out.
This is the crazy thing I’ve seen you are making us pay for the other channels we have lost, now your talking about taking away even more channels and still pay. To me that something like against the law they may won’t to think about that I’d get me a lawyer. Very poor way to do business.
We lost our local CBS and another station last year. We bought an external antenna, so we can now see those stations. It can also be a plus during a storm when the Dish signal gets blocked.
The largest event in the US and we can talk watch the Super Bowel because it’s on NBC and here in Arizona we have NBC , we’ve been customers foe over 20 yrs time to change.
Glad I’m no longer a dish network dealer and have to sell their crap anymore.
Every time they had a programming dispute me as the retailer would be in the middle of it with our customers.
Directv has disputes also, but dish is the leader in programming disputes among programmers.
Now I get my former dish customers call me, we switch them to Directv
Dish puts these locals up for free, no cost to the stations. Theyvare greedy aholes.
You are 100% incorrect..I fact, you are full of you know what..
All programming providers, satellite, cable and streaming are required to pay the owners of network affiliates to rebroadcast the signals.
This is known as “retransmission consent”.
There is no such thing as “free”.
Dish VIP’s – fix the problem or losing channels will be the least of Dish’s problems – Just think if you have a wallet full of channels and because of the management style or the lack there of. Anyway you’ll have zero sets on showing all the programming with no one powering on!
I have lost my upper channels also and am still paying the same price which isn’t fair we should get something taken off our bill but either way I am going to cancel dish and go somewhere else
Leave Dish.. . It’s far far better than worthless at&t which is a crappy alternative. Let DirectTV after at&t totally screwed over the customers. Lost CBS over a year ago. Get it Ota but signal is crappy. Life is what it is. The thing I miss about the locals is local news and weather. Be nice if they would take that into consideration.
For those mentioning they would at least like local news and weather. Many (if not most) local network affiliates have their news broadcasts available via an app you can get on Roku, FireTV etc. I often use the same app on my iPad (android has also). Of course you need the internet, but most people have that today. P.S. Dish in Phoenix dropped NBC Oct’21 ish, and now end of Jan’22 CBS is gone from the guide. Good luck all ! Cheers.
We became customers last year during the summer due to cost of Spectrum. We also wanted to have DISH set up a transmitter on our camper that is in another town campground 20 minutes away from our home, which the tech said DISH could do and would connect to home base. This all didn’t work, DISH customer service would not come to help install the equipment, once we had another electrician look, he said it would be impossible due to where we are in the campground. We was upset, but was able to return all the equipment and refunded. Since then we have been upset with Channel 10 being eliminated and with all the NFL not coming through. We will be cancelling at the end of our contract.
About to get dish on the 27 th these comments have given me a lot to think about it’s only tv but local is important
I would seriously consider cancelling your install