Posted on 11/21/2017 12:40:09 PM PST by EdnaMode
Nearly 3 million Dish Network subscribers in 18 cities, including Los Angeles, have lost access to their local CBS television station — just two days before Thanksgiving, when many Americans want to watch NFL football.
The blackout comes amid a contentious fee dispute between satellite TV provider Dish Network and CBS Corp., which owns the television stations. Customers in New York, Chicago, Dallas, Philadelphia, Miami, San Francisco, Denver and other markets also were hit by the blackout, which in addition to the local stations includes three CBS cable channels: CBS Sports Network, Smithsonian Channel and Pop.
Dish has nearly 400,000 subscriber homes in the greater Los Angeles area.
“Dish subscribers are in jeopardy of being without CBS over the Thanksgiving holiday, which would mean they would miss CBS Sports’ NFL and SEC football coverage,” CBS said in a statement.
CBS is set to broadcast the NFL matchup between the Chargers and the Dallas Cowboys on Thanksgiving.
“I am very upset. Why does the customer always have to suffer in these situations?” asked Jerry Horn, a Dish customer in Narrowsburg, N.Y. “We pay the bills. … Keep us connected during contract disputes!”
The outage knocked WCBS-TV Channel 2 in New York — one of Horn’s favorite stations — from his channel offerings. “I am going to miss ‘NCIS,’ ‘Bull’ and ‘NCIS New Orleans,’” Horn said, referencing popular CBS shows.
The outage began at 11 p.m. PST on Monday. That’s when the companies’ previous carriage contract expired, leaving Dish without authorization to retransmit the signals of CBS stations. The two sides had been trying to hammer out a new contract since January with little progress, according to one person familiar with the matter but was not authorized to comment publicly.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
fcbsfnfl
air TV won’t work for CBS ?
Who is watching NFL?
I won’t miss it, but wife will fuss about not being able to watch Wheel of Fortune.
So, CBS will have to refund ad money?
Yeah, fat chance...
The only downside here is the loss of college football.
I’ve found it to be an excellent replacement for the NFL.
The air is still free.
Like you say, seems like a $20 digital antenna would solve this issue.
Also, these folks need to cut the cord.
A Thanksgiving Day without football sounds good to me.
The new “Excuse du jour” for empty seats.
I rarely watch anything on CBS so it would be no loss to me.
My brother has Dish. They are offering to come and install an over-the-air digital antenna for free. Sounds to me like they want to get off the treadmill of constantly negotiating rebroadcast rights.
Anybody watching these UNGRATEFUL NFL jack@sses on the DAY of Thanksgiving is desecrating the day. NFL sucks bad drumsticks.
Many millions of Americans can't get unthrottled broadband, you know.
At our house we are limited to 5mbps DSL or wireless with a 40G per month cap. Can't do much with Netflix, Hulu, etc on those terms.....
She can stream anime from the internet, all is well with the world.
Cord cutter and antenna cutter.
“Hide the decline”: not just for climate change any more.
It’s why I keep an over the air antenna for situations such as this.
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