Updated: Cox Could Lose 7 Local Stations In Fee Fight - The TV Answer Man!
Cox could lose seven local TV stations in six markets late tonight due to a fee fight with their owner, Tegna Media.
Update: Cox and Tegna have signed a new multi-year carriage agreement; blackout averted.
The stations have posted notices at their web sites that Cox viewers could lose their signals at 11:59 p.m. ET tonight if a new carriage pact between the companies is not reached. If the companies don’t settle by this weekend, Cox viewers in such markets as Washington, D.C., New Orleans and Norfolk, Virginia could miss the NFL Playoff games.
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Cox and Tegna are fighting over how much the cable operator should pay to carry the channels.
“Unfortunately, so far Cox has refused to reach a fair, market-based agreement with us — even though the terms being offered are similar to those which allowed us to reach hundreds of deals with…other providers,” Tegna stations state in their web notice to viewers.
Cox has yet to issue a statement on the dispute. .
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Tegna owns 46 local stations across the country, but only seven stations would be affected in this dispute because Cox is only available in select markets.
The stations that could be blacked out on Cox tonight are: WUSA-TV, the CBS affiliate in Washington, D.C., KPNX-TV, the NBC affiliate in Phoenix; WMAZ-TV, the CBS affiliate in Macon, Georgia; WWL-TV, the CBS affiliate in New Orleans; WURL-TV, the My TV network in New Orleans; WKYC-TV, the NBC affiliate in Cleveland; and WVEC-TV, the ABC affiliate in Norfolk, Virginia.
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