TV Talk: WTAE joins WPXI in losing carriage on DISH Network
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For perhaps the first time ever, two of the legacy Big Three broadcast affiliates in Pittsburgh are no longer available to DISH Network subscribers in Western Pennsylvania.
WPXI-TV has been off DISH since November 2022 in a retransmission dispute between WPXI parent Cox Media Group and DISH. Now, WTAE-TV is off DISH following a dispute that has taken all 37 local Hearst local channels off the satellite service.
“The current carriage agreement had been set to expire at midnight July 31, but was extended by Hearst Television multiple times until 2 p.m. ET (Sept. 8) in an attempt to avoid an impasse,” WTAE general manager Charles Wolfertz III said in a statement Friday afternoon. “Unfortunately, the DISH negotiating team is seeking the right to carry our stations at below market rates, which is neither fair nor reasonable given the significant investments we have made to deliver top-tier programming to our viewers.”
Hearst noted that the station remains available over the air and via other satellite, cable and streaming distributors.
For its part, a DISH statement said, “Hearst is demanding tens of millions of dollars in rate increases that would affect customers, while it devalues its product by making programming available elsewhere, even as viewership declines. … Demanding higher rates for the same entertainment and news just doesn’t make sense, especially as Hearst’s content is widely available on other platforms.”
These are not the only retransmission disputes currently ongoing nationally; 37 Nexstar-controlled NBC affiliates (there is none in Pittsburgh) have been off DirecTV since early July.
All ABC-owned local and cable channels (ESPN, Disney Channel, FX, etc.) are off Charter Spectrum cable systems, including in the country’s largest TV markets, New York and Los Angeles. That particular battle is seen as perhaps portending the end of cable TV as we know it as Charter got fed up with a media company diverting its best programming to its own streaming platforms, Disney+ and Hulu, while still insisting on higher retransmission fees. Charter executives, who are demanding their customers get free access to Disney’s streaming platforms as part of a new carriage deal, have said they’d rather exit the cable business entirely than agree to Disney’s terms.
“We had to say, enough is enough,” Charter CEO Chris Winfrey said Thursday at a Goldman Sachs investor conference, per The Wall Street Journal. “(Disney’s negotiating stance amounts to letting its) linear programming house burn to the ground.”
It’s unclear if the Hearst-DISH dispute is existential in nature, like the Charter Spectrum-Disney battle, or of the more routine variety.