Multi-year agreement returns 54 local broadcast stations to customers in 36 metro regions
EL SEGUNDO, Calif., July 10, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — DIRECTV today announced a new multi-year agreement that will return 54 local broadcast stations owned and operated by The E.W. Scripps Company (NASDAQ: SSP) to DIRECTV streaming, satellite, and U-verse customers, effective immediately.
The agreement ends a five-week blackout affecting millions of customers across 36 Nielsen DMAs, including Baltimore, Buffalo, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Denver, Detroit, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Milwaukee, Nashville, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, Tampa-St. Petersburg, and others, with access to local news from their communities, as well as significant cultural events like the annual NBA Finals and NHL Stanley Cup Final, or the ongoing FIFA World Cup.
“We’re grateful to our customers for their patience. Like them, we are frustrated that broadcasters use blackouts as a tool to force us to accept unwarranted rate hikes that consistently exceed normal, inflationary increases, and by a lot,” said Rob Thun, chief content officer at DIRECTV. “At a time when affordability matters more than ever, families are too often asked to pay more while receiving less.
“Local broadcasters were entrusted with serving their communities through local news, weather, emergency information, and hometown sports,” Thun added. “But as ownership becomes concentrated among a handful of ever-larger broadcasters gaining stations across new and within their existing markets, those expanded stations become increasingly powerful and further unbalanced negotiating tools. The more markets and major network affiliations a broadcaster controls, the greater its ability to withhold programming from the very communities it is meant to serve.
“Consumers should never lose access to essential local television because of a carriage dispute. It’s time to modernize the system so it rewards service to local communities—and not consolidated market power—by returning to the original purpose of broadcasting of putting viewers’ interests first,” Thun concluded.
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SOURCE DIRECTV
