CBS Stations Go Dark On DirecTV, U-Verse I AT & T Dispute – Deadline

CBS stations in more than a dozen markets, including New York and Los Angeles, have gone dark on AT&T's DirecTV satellite systems, DirecTV Now online bundled bundles and U-verse cable systems.

The dispute became public earlier this week, with the usual exchange of hard-formulated statements.

The wagon contract between CBS stations in more than a dozen markets, including New York and LA, and AT & T-owned satellite giant DirecTV, DirecTV Now and U-verse cable systems officially expired on Friday at. 11.00 PT. The battle comes at the same time that dozens of local stations owned by Nexstar are also in a death with AT&T, so these stations are dark over the last two plus weeks.

Programming at CBS at this point rarely links seership records, but the longest leading broadcaster in total viewers remains a power plant, especially when football season kicking in. The NFL and SEC college games return in early September.

In a long statement on Friday morning, AT&T said it has "offered to pay CBS an outstanding interest rate increase and the highest fee we currently pay to any major broadcasting network group. CBS has refused."

It also claimed that CBS refused to allow AT&T to offer CBS All Access, the subscription streaming service, just like Amazon, Apple and Roku. The Telecom giant therefore concluded that CBS tried to "seek out" pay-TV consumers and forced them to pay $ 6 or $ 10 a month for All Access for either limited advertising or no advertising version.

CBS has not offered a comment on that claim.

Earlier this week, CBS said AT & T had proposed "unfair terms" that were "well below those agreed by their competitors."

A person familiar with the talks told Frist for the expiring contract seven years, an eternity by today's rapidly developed pay-TV standards. In 2012, when that deal would have begun, millions more customers paid for traditional bundled TV packages, and independent streaming services hardly existed.

Furthermore, the image for AT & T complicates the 81 billion US acquisition of Time Warner, which closed in mid-2018 and left the company with $ 170 billion in long-term debt at the end of last year. AT&T has methodically reduced costs and eliminated large pieces of that debt, with executives promising to return to normal debt levels over the next two to three years.