Morgan Murphy Blasts Dish At FCC

Morgan Murphy Media has told the FCC that while MVPDs claim broadcasters’ don’t negotiate in good faith during retransmission consent disputes, some are guilty of the same practices.

Specifically, Morgan Murphy Media (which owns stations in Madison, Wis.; La Crosse-Eau Claire, Wis.; Spokane, Wash.; and Yakima-Pasco-Richland-Kennewick, Wash.), says Dish Network filed a complaint at the FCC against the Sinclair Broadcast Group on Aug. 15 claiming that Sinclair had not negotiated in good faith.

But, says the broadcaster in a letter filed with the commission today, “This tale might be more convincing if, at the very same time, Dish were not engaged in precisely the same tactic. Morgan Murphy’s contract with Dish was set to expire on July 16, 2015. Morgan Murphy sent an offer of terms to Dish on May 12, 2015. Despite repeated inquiries, Dish did not make a proposal in response until June 25, 2015, almost six weeks later. The parties then negotiated both rates and agreement terms. Just before the contract expired, Dish agreed to an extension until Aug. 7, 2015. The parties continued to negotiate and they agreed on a second extension to expire Aug. 13, 2015.

“Before the expiration of that extension, Morgan Murphy offered to agree to an additional extension on terms similar to those Dish offered to Sinclair, i.e., to “true-up” rates back to the beginning of the term when the parties reached agreement. Dish, however, declined to extend the agreement unless Morgan Murphy would offer a substantial and unilateral reduction in its proposed rates. Morgan Murphy offered to continue negotiations but Dish took the position that it had reached its “bottom line” and declined to respond to Morgan Murphy’s last offer.

“The Morgan Murphy stations have been off of the Dish system since the evening of Aug. 13, depriving thousands of consumers of access to ABC and CBS programming and valuable local news and information. It is quite remarkable that Dish, having declined to agree to extend the agreement with Morgan Murphy, than argued to the commission that declining to accept an offer of a contract extension constitutes a violation of the good faith bargaining rules. To paraphrase Dish, it has nothing to lose and consumers everything to gain from an extension. That observation, however, apparently applies to broadcasters but not to Dish itself. If Sinclair is found to have violated its obligation to negotiate in good faith, the same finding should be applied to Dish.”

Morgan Murphy went on to say that “the only MVPD with which it has ever failed to reach an agreement is Dish, which reportedly is responsible for the largest number of service interruptions of all MVPDs. The commission should pay little head to complaints from Dish and other MVPDs who are the proverbial ‘pot calling the kettle black.’ ”