DISH blacked out all Cox Media Group (CMG) TV stations in Atlanta on Tuesday, preventing hundreds of thousands of consumers across Atlanta from accessing CMG’s critical local news, emergency weather and traffic information, popular sports and other local and national network programming.
“DISH is infamously unreasonable and difficult to deal with in retransmission consent and all other content negotiations. In their latest example, DISH has refused to make any meaningful offer to continue carriage of CMG’s award-winning local news, investigative journalism, popular sports and entertainment content. This has undercut both local broadcasting and its own customers,” said Paul Curran, EVP of Television, Cox Media Group. “Let me be clear – despite their numerous false claims, it was solely DISH’s decision to remove CMG’s best-in-class TV stations from its service. To keep our stations on the DISH platform, we offered DISH an extension of our current agreement with no strings attached, but DISH refused. We’re simply asking DISH to agree to a fair-market deal that is consistent to what their competitors have agreed without any interruption of service to consumers.”
CMG complained that it has repeatedly asked DISH to continue carrying the stations while negotiating in good faith toward a fair-market deal. DISH has refused to negotiate in good faith and declined to keep the stations on air while working towards a deal.
