News
DIRECTV vs. Sinclair: It's D-Day!
By Swanni
Washington, D.C. (February 28, 2013) -
DIRECTV
has issued an upbeat
statement that it will get a last-minute deal today to keep Sinclair's
87 local stations or the companies will sign an extension that
would ensure the stations are not removed.
"DIRECTV continues to make significant progress
each day toward a new long-term programming relationship with
Sinclair Broadcast Group. This offers further assurance to our
customers that there will be no interruption of their local
programming," DIRECTV said on its web site, DIRECTVPromise.com.
"We also anticipate that, even in the most extreme case,
Sinclair and DIRECTV will agree to a brief extension beyond the
initial Feb. 28 deadline to hammer out any final details."
And what does Sinclair say?
The broadcaster's stations this morning are continuing to post
warning notices at their web sites saying DIRECTV subscribers
may lose their signals on March 1 when the current programming
pact expires.
Barry Faber, an executive vice president for Sinclair, told
Multichannel News that "there are still significant open points
between us. We are still talking and the gap has narrowed. I
hope we will be able to reach an agreement by midnight tomorrow
(today) but I really don't have a prediction right now."
Sinclair last week
began alerting customers at station web sites, on on-screen
crawls and on its Facebook page that the current agreement
between the two companies expires on March 1. And if a new deal
is not reached by then, DIRECTV could be forced to remove the
Sinclair stations from the air.
DIRECTV subscribers could lose
channels in such markets as Baltimore, Milwaukee, Richmond, Salt
Lake City, San Antonio, Austin, Nashville, Pittsburgh, Oklahoma
City, Cincinnati, Las Vegas, St. Louis, Des Moines and
Minneapolis.
Sinclair owns 24 Fox affiliates,
19 MyTV stations, 12 ABC stations, 16 CW affiliates, 11 CBS
stations, 3 NBC stations and two independent stations. To see a
complete list, click:
Sinclair.
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