It’s been a while since I’ve posted about a retransmission dispute, but there’s two of them going on, and one may be severed permanently.
Five Gray Media (formerly Gray TV) stations serving Iowa were pulled off Dish on March 10: KCRG, KTIV, KWQC, KYOU, and WOWT. The Des Moines Register article March 11 omitted WOWT, presumably because the reporter did not think it was a station for Iowa, but we know better.
Gray’s press release says Dish “insisted that Gray agree to a materially adverse provision in the new agreement that is unlike any provision in any distribution agreement with Gray’s roughly 400 other distribution partners, and, to Gray’s knowledge, unprecedented in the several decade history of the pay-TV industry across any cable or DBS operator and any broadcaster.”
Dish’s press release says Gray “is utilizing its market dominance to demand ‘retransmission consent’ fee hikes that are disconnected from the reality of declining viewership.”
Whoever you want to believe, in the end, prices for Dish subscribers will go up…
…unless negotiations are cut off entirely, as appears to have happened with the streaming network Fubo and NBC. All NBC stations were pulled from Fubo last Nov. 21 and haven’t been back, and by multiple reports on the Internet, won’t be coming back. It’s all about pricing, and with a slight twist — Disney, which also owns big-city ABC stations, owns Fubo. Fubo already had imposed a different regulation on all Disney stations and ABC affiliates that wasn’t set on others — you can’t watch if you have a dual monitor setup. (That one’s from personal experience.)