News
DIRECTV & Sunbeam Are Talking
(Finally)
By Swanni
Washington, D.C.
(January 18,
2012) -- There is a sliver of
hope today that DIRECTV and Sunbeam might be closer to ending
their fee fight which has denied the satcaster's Miami
subscribers access to their local Fox station and Boston viewers
access to their NBC and CW stations since Friday.
The Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel reports that the two sides
yesterday negotiated directly for the first time since the
blackout began. In addition, Sunbeam's Miami station has made a
counter-proposal to DIRECTV, the newspaper reports. It's not
clear if the new proposal would cover the Boston stations as
well.
The Sun-Sentinel writes that DIRECTV is expected to respond to
WSVN, the Fox affiliate in Miami, by today.
The outage has been especially thorny for Sunbeam and DIRECTV
with football fans in Miami upset about losing Fox's coverage of
the NFL playoffs over the weekend. Boston viewers were also
angry about losing NBC's broadcast of the Golden Globes awards
on Sunday night.
DIRECTV claims that Sunbeam is asking for a 300 percent
increase in carriage fees. DIRECTV also said Sunbeam refused its
request to continue carrying the channels while negotiations
continued.
However, Sunbeam's local stations in Boston and Miami said they
are only asking for "fair value" for DIRECTV to carry their
signals.