Gray Television Surpasses ‘Major Retrans Renewal Milestone’

Gray Television said today that it has successfully completed renewals of retransmission consent agreements representing more than 70% of its total subscriber footprint among cable, satellite and telco multichannel video programming distributors (“traditional MVPDs”) in its current three-year retransmission renewal cycle that began with the renewal of agreements with three of the largest traditional MVPDs in the first quarter of 2023.

Rob Folliard, Gray’s senior vice president, said: “Consistent with Gray’s history of retransmission renewal negotiations since the early 1990s, these negotiations, while often difficult and always complex, were all conducted without any disruption to consumers. We sincerely appreciate the cooperative, constructive efforts of our MVPD partners in this renewal cycle.”

Kevin Latek, Gray executive vice president, added: “As a testament to the value of the live, local news and sports content that Gray’s stations provide, we have reached this retrans renewal milestone on rates and other terms that met our budgets and that will allow our stations to continue making considerable investments to expand local news and sports for the benefit of the local communities where our employees and these MVPDs’ employees live and work.”

Based on the successful negotiations with traditional MVPDs to date, Gray said it anticipates that it will complete its current renewal cycle “by reaching new deals with a small number of cable operators serving less than 30% of our remaining traditional MVPD subscriber base, primarily during the second half of this year. Thereafter, Gray’s next renewal cycle will begin in the first quarter of 2026.”