Unable to reach an agreement on a new retransmission consent contract with Raycom, AT&T U-Verse subs in 23 markets found themselves without their local Raycom stations late Wednesday night. Raycom says U-Verse has been harder to deal with since AT&T's merger with DirecTV two years ago.
U-Verse, Raycom Fail To Renew Retrans Pact
At midnight last night, AT&T U-Verse customers in 23 markets lost access to their Raycom Media Stations — the result of Raycom and AT&T failing to renew their retransmission consent agreement.
According to a Raycom, it was the fifth time that U-Verse subscribers have lost broadcast signals since AT&T merged with DirecTV in the summer of 2015. Prior to the merger, U-Verse had no signal disruptions during retrans negotiations.
“We never want our communities to experience a disruption,” said Pat LaPlatney, Raycom Media president-CEO. “These retransmission consent agreements are important free-market negotiations that sustain broadcast localism. It is unfortunate that AT&T U-Verse appears to be involving their customers in their broader business strategy.”
In the last three years, Raycom Media has successfully negotiated retransmission consent agreements with 99.5% of its operators without a disruption to viewers, Raycom said.
According to Raycom, it reached a total of 11 retransmission agreements with multichannel video programming distributors in 2016. The deals covered 41 Raycom Media markets, and maintained service to more than 2.5 million subscribers with no disruption, which represents over 15% of the total subscriber base that chooses to view Raycom Media programming via MVPD.
Comments (1)
Sarah Terrill says:
March 17, 2017 at 9:36 am
Raycom is being greedy.Why can’t they allow the stations to broadcast while the continue to negotiate.If this is not resolved quickly I thinke a grassroot effort to boycott Raycom would be in order.