ATLANTA & DALLAS—With the clock ticking toward the kickoff of Super Bowl LV on Feb. 7, Cox Media Group and AT&T announced that they had reached a new multi-year retransmission deal that would return Cox stations in 20 markets to AT&T/DirecTV customers.
The blackout of these stations began in the early hours of Feb. 2, impacting 26 stations in total. In five markets the impacted stations were the local CBS affiliate, which would have made Super Bowl LV unavailable to watch over traditional broadcast for AT&T customers in those markets.
The American Television Alliance (ATVA) had been extremely critical of the timing of the blackout, claiming that Cox has used the prospect of withholding the Super Bowl as a tactic in other retransmission negotiations.
Terms of the new agreement were not disclosed.
Here are the markets that had their CMG stations returned on Feb. 7:
- Alexandria, La.
- Atlanta
- Binghamton, N.Y.
- Boston
- Charlotte, N.C.
- Dayton, Ohio
- Eureka, Calif.
- Greenville-Greenwood, Miss.
- Idaho Falls-Pocatello, Idaho
- Jacksonville, Fla.
- Medford, Ore.
- Memphis, Tenn.
- Orlando, Fla.
- Pittsburgh
- Seattle
- Spokane, Wash.
- Syracuse, N.Y.
- Tulsa, Okla.
- Yakima-Tri Cities, Wash.
- Yuma, Ariz.
