DISH yesterday filed a complaint with the FCC against Tegna Inc., one of the nation’s largest broadcast station owners, claiming the broadcaster forced a blackout of 65 Tegna stations in 53 markets nationwide, adversely affecting nearly three million DISH subscribers.
“Tegna turned its back on its public interest obligation and failed to engage in good faith retransmission consent negotiations with DISH,” said Andy LeCuyer, DISH SVP of Programming. “Tegna’s demands were both unreasonable and inconsistent. This behavior negatively impacts DISH subscribers, and we expect Tegna’s bad behavior to only get worse as the programmer looks to sell its stations to the highest bidder. As a result, we have filed a formal complaint with the FCC to address Tegna’s blatant disregard of the Commission’s rules.”
The complaint said it appeared Tegna demanded that DISH pay them for all DISH subscribers in a local market (a Designated Market Area or “DMA”)—whether they purchase local programming from DISH or not. In addition, DISH said they refused to grant them retransmission consent for any of its Big-4-affiliated broadcast stations until and unless DISH also agreed to retransmit its CW, MyNetworkTV and independent stations and pay higher rates for these unwanted stations.
DISH’s complaint against Tegna Inc. can be found here.
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