Dish subscribers in 21 markets are set to miss both this month’s Winter Olympics and Super Bowl due to the satcaster’s carriage disputes with owners of NBC network affiliates. NBC has the exclusive U.S. broadcast rights to both the 2022 Winter Olympics (which start Thursday) and the 2022 Super Bowl on February 13.
Update, February 4, 2022: Dish and Tegna have signed a new deal. Blackout is over.
The satellite service is missing more than 100 channels due to fee fights dating back more than two years and the list includes 64 Tegna-owned local affiliates. The Tegna stations include 20 local NBC affiliates:
KPNX-TV in Phoenix, KUSA-TV in Denver, WTLV-TV in Jacksonville, WXIA-TV in Atlanta, KTVB-TV in Boise, Idaho, WTHR-TV in Indianapolis, WCSH in Portland, Maine, KARE-TV in Minneapolis, KSDK-TV in St. Louis, WGRZ-TV in Buffalo, WKYC-TV in Cleveland, WLBW-TV in Bangor, Maine, KGW-TV in Portland, Oregon, KTFT-TV in Twin Falls, Idaho, WBIR-TV in Knoxville, Tennessee, KBMT-TV in Beaumont, Texas, KWES-TV in Odessa/Midland, Texas, WCNC-TV in Charlotte, North Carolina, KCEN-TV in Waco, Texas and KING-TV in Seattle.
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In addition, Dish is missing KOMU-TV, the NBC affiliate in Columbia, Missouri, in a separate dispute with its owner, the University of Missouri.
Dish could settle one or both disputes before the Olympics and Super Bowl, but that seems unlikely. The satellite service’s fight with Tegna is now almost four months old and two sides have filed counter claims of ‘bad faith’ negotiating against each other at the Federal Communications Commission.
The Dish-KOMU blackout dates back to last March.
However, major events such as the Super Bowl have sometimes triggered settlements between pay TV providers and station owners. Anxious that they will miss the big game, viewers will put more pressure on their providers and local stations to end the fight. This in turn often prompts local politicians to get involved by calling for the two sides to settle.
If the disputes do not end, Dish subscribers in the 21 markets could watch the Winter Olympics and Super Bowl on Peacock, the NBC-owned streaming service. However, that will require a subscription to Peacock which starts at $4.99 a month.
NBC will broadcast the game for free via TV antennas.
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The people that are effected the most by these fights are the ones who live in rural areas. Where I live, I’m controlled by locals that do not send enough signals for an antenna to work at my house. So they make the cable and satellite companies pay to do they the job the local channel is supposed to do—provide free tv to their owned geographic area. I live roughly halfway between two markets but I’m owned by one and denied access to the other. Our congress is so stupid, I don’t think they even realize what they have done. If a station owns a certain geographic area and does not provide a signal at your address for an antenna, then I think they should have to pay the satellite and cable companies to deliver their signal to the area. The tv stations should be required to cover the area that they have assigned as theirs. All the tv companies would have to do is install more broadcast points. More towers and problem is solved. But it probably would be less expensive on them to let the satellite and cable complies deliver their free signal to all their market! But owing the area and not covering it with their signal and then charging someone to do their job does not seem fair to me at all! But then again, this is all about laws that our congress has passed!
I hope the “planned” ownership of Directv to DISH never, ever happens!
This is what we would have to look forward to. DISH isn’t interested in its responsibilities to broadcast all legal TV in any given market. They have no desire to work with the Sports Nets or any others unless it makes a ton of moo-la!
Let this be a forewarning. I know you seem to be for this merger. Thinking that this may save the satellite business for a few extra years. I say if this is the service we can expect, then the Satellite and its Co.s deserve their fate.
Seriously we all know that Satellite TV is destined for the history books sooner then later. I unfortunately can not receive TV signals or cable where I have my satellite. I am a sports enthusiast (a very nice way of putting it). I love the ability to receive every Sports Net in the country plus Baseball, Football and Basketball. It is all very expensive, but it keeps me home at night… You know if DISH gets Directv, this will be gone!
Amen!
Ditto…amen!
Why am I paying over $100 for stuff that I don’t want! Incredible — if my Internet wasn’t so lousy I would drop them today. Where is the FTC in this long winded dispute —
I am getting frustrated by Dish’s response to this. To pay over $100/month for TV and not have the Olympics or the Super Bowl? I am paying for local channels, and Dish is not providing them. Dish is keeping my money but not having to pay Tegna all these months. Dish finally offered me $5 for the month of January, but what about all the other months?
I got Peacock so I’ve been able to watch some NBC shows, but the reason I have Dish is for the DVR service. I love to record shows and sports and watch them when I’m able to. Peacock only shows sports live, so while this blackout continues, I’ve been unable to record games and watch them later when I can. I’ve been with Dish for over a decade, but when my contract ends this summer, I am done.
Dish is not taking care of its customers. I shouldn’t have to call every month and ask for the $5 credit. Dish should figure this out in time for the Super Bowl and Olympics. I supported Dish initially, but this has gone on too long.
(And Is Dish TRYING to push customers out the door to streaming? Because as more people try Peacock and other streaming services during this outage, they may find maybe they can live without Dish after all?)
I complained to Dish about them not providing all of the channels and thought they should offer some kind of credit. It was only after I asked that they did this. Then they recommended to get an over the air antenna or stream. What they should do is provide all of the customers who are effected by this outage a coupon to cover the cost of an antenna. We should go spend even more money because they are in a dispute. They also ripped people off with the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade. NBC is the official channel for that parade. Although I was able to watch it on another network, it was not good coverage, but at least I did see it. The customer suffers and noone cares. While companies keep saying they are trying to keep their rates low, they still go up, and noone gets their way except the companies, recouping profits they lose in one way or another at the customer’s expense.
Both Dish and Tegna need to pull their big boy pants on and think about all the consumers they are screwing and put an end to this fiasco!
NBC is owned by Comcast so this is about Comcast wanting to make Dish customers switch service. All Dish is doing is providing broader coverage for NBC which would be free if local affiliates would broadcast with a strong enough signal for OTA antennas. NBC should be paying Dish to broadcast its programming to the boondocks. I hope advertisers are getting hefty discounts for all the ads that Dish customers aren’t seeing. Denying free programming to only Dish customers amounts to unfair monopoly pricing aimed at hurting Comcast’s competition. Comcast should not be allowed to own tv broadcasters and Congress should break it up. But they’re incentivized to hurt the Olympics because China is out-competing the US plutocracy and threatening it’s “New World Order”.
Dish and its customers are the now victims of Comcast along with Comcast customers who are famously abused at every turn. I wouldn’t pay NBC or switch to Comcast if it was the only TV programming I could get. I’ll be perfectly happy to watch the Super Bowl on NFL Network later & I haven’t watched an Olympics event in over 20 years. Hang tough, Dish! Do not surrender to greedy, Comcast!
Only 1 correction to your hypothesis,Comcast/NBC are the providers to Tegna, they do not own Tegna and have no real say in this battle.
However, I’m sure Comcast could “help” Tegna in some way if it desired but that would bring the raft of other affiliates.
Eventually, and prob sooner then we all think, the Networks will release these non-owned affiliates and use the internet solely for distribution. Allowing the local OTA channels to fend for themselves. I’m not sure wether this is good or bad for consumers but it will certainly change all the rules.
Dish is a competitor of Comcast which owns NBC. Comcast is sacrificing NBC profits to hurt Dish.
Sick to death of these asinine fee fights where the only ones losing are the subscribers like me. I pay $127 a month for DISH to cheat me out of two things I looked forward to all year: the Olympics and the Super Bowl. I’ve had it!