By Phillip Swann
The TV Answer Man – @tvanswerman
Starting tomorrow, DIRECTV Stream will again carry 21 Sinclair-owned CW affiliates after Sinclair today announced a new CW affiliation agreement with Nexstar, the majority owner of the network. DIRECTV charged last month that Nexstar forced Sinclair to deny the signals to DIRECTV Stream due to Nexstar’s carriage dispute with DIRECTV, DIRECTV Stream and U-verse. DIRECTV has been without Nexstar-owned 159 network affiliates since July 2 when the two sides could not reach a new deal.
Nexstar denied the DIRECTV allegation regarding the CW and DIRECTV Stream. In a letter to the FCC, the broadcaster said: “DIRECTV seeks to exploit the expiration of its retransmission consent agreement with Nexstar in an attempt to prove that Nexstar is ‘withhold[ing] programming’ on CW-affiliated stations to gain leverage in its retransmission consent negotiations. This is false.”
But a DIRECTV spokesman said today that the new Sinclair-CW affiliation pact allows Sinclair to again provide the stations to DIRECTV Stream. “We’re certainly pleased that Sinclair seems to have seized back the right to provide its viewers, and our customers, the programming they should have always retained in the first place,” the spokesman said.
Here are the CW stations that will return to DIRECTV Stream tomorrow. They include some stations managed by Sinclair, not owned.
| Cunningham Broadcasting Corporation | Baltimore, MD | WNUV |
| Cunningham Broadcasting Corporation | Flint-Saginaw-Bay City, MI | WBSF |
| Deerfield Media-Manhan Media | Columbus, OH | WWHO |
| GoCom Media of Illinois, LLC | Champaign, IL | WBUI |
| MPS Media | Chattanooga, TN | WFLI |
| MPS Media | Tallahassee, FL-Thomasville, GA | WTLF |
| MPS Media | Wilkes Barre-Scranton, PA | WSWB |
| Sinclair Broadcast Group | Albany-Schenectady-Troy, NY | WCWN |
| Sinclair Broadcast Group | Birmingham, AL | WTTO |
| Sinclair Broadcast Group | Fresno-Visalia, CA | KFRE |
| Sinclair Broadcast Group | Green Bay, WI | WCWF |
| Sinclair Broadcast Group | Las Vegas, NV | KVCW |
| Sinclair Broadcast Group | Milwaukee, WI | WVTV |
| Sinclair Broadcast Group | Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN | WUCW |
| Sinclair Broadcast Group | Myrtle Beach-Florence, SC | WPDE-DT |
| Sinclair Broadcast Group | Nashville, TN | WZTV-DT |
| Sinclair Broadcast Group | Oklahoma City, OK | KOCB |
| Sinclair Broadcast Group | Omaha, NE | KPTM-DT |
| Sinclair Broadcast Group | Raleigh-Durham, NC | WLFL |
| Sinclair Broadcast Group | San Antonio, TX | WOAI-DT |
| Sinclair Broadcast Group | West Palm Beach-Ft. Pierce, FL | WTVX |
Have a question about new TV technologies? Send it to The TV Answer Man at swann@tvanswerman.com Please include your first name and hometown in your message.
— Phillip Swann
@tvanswerman
