IRVING, Texas—Following failed negotiations for a new retransmission consent agreement, 63 local TV stations in 42 markets owned by Nexstar were blacked out on Altice USA’s Optimum branded cable systems around the country.
The blackout began at 5 p.m. January 10 and also included Nexstar’s national cable news network, NewsNation
In an indication that Altice may be digging in for lengthy dispute, Optimum’s website offered its consumers a free trial and then 30% off their first two months to the vMVPD Fubo. It also provided detailed viewing options for accessing other upcoming football games.
Following the impasse both sides traded barbs.
“Altice has consistently made unreasonable and unprecedented demands of Nexstar, culminating with their decision to walk away from the negotiations,” said Michael Biard, Nexstar’s president and chief operating officer. “Unfortunately, this seems to be a regular pattern of behavior for Altice, which dropped the MSG Network just last week, depriving millions of New York sports fans the opportunity to see their favorite teams in action. We understand the difficulty of Altice’s financial situation, burdened as it is by billions in debt, but the solution isn’t to force Optimum subscribers to continually pay more while getting less.”
In response, Altice USA said that Optimum offered an extension to keep Nexstar’s content on the air while they continued to negotiate, but Nexstar refused.
“Unfortunately, Nexstar is using an anti-consumer negotiation tactic – tying local channels to less popular ones – requiring Optimum and its customers to pay for channels like NewsNation, which has essentially no viewership, in order to continue carrying Nexstar broadcast stations in various markets across the country,” a statement from Optimum said. “To illustrate the absurdity of this demand, we note that in any given month, 90% of customers – more than 1.2 million – never tune in to NewsNation, making it unfair to force customers to pay tens of millions of dollars for content they never watch and hold them hostage to force carriage of broadcast stations. Despite NewsNation’s shockingly low viewership, Nexstar has taken this one step further by demanding expanded distribution of the channel to hundreds of thousands more customers, requiring that even more customers who don’t watch it are made to pay for it.”
“Plus, Nexstar is demanding exorbitant rates, the highest of any broadcasting group, the statement added. “Nexstar’s `all or nothing’ approach of price gouging customers by forcing them to pay for content they don’t want and bundling different stations and channels together into the same negotiations – despite their varied programming and audiences across different states – is in no one’s best interest but their own.
“We remain open to continued negotiations with Nexstar to reach a fair new deal to restore their programming on Optimum TV lineups,” the statement concluded. “In the meantime, customers who are looking to watch Nexstar-owned content can continue to do so for free over the air with an antenna or visit www.optimum.com/nexstar to learn more about the solutions Optimum is making available.”
