Impasse cuts KOAT from DirecTV lineup
The company declined to say how many subscribers are affected.
Channel 7 has gone dark for many viewers as the station’s owner feuds with DirecTV over the amount of money the satellite company pays to beam its broadcasts to subscribers around New Mexico.
The satellite network stopped carrying KOAT-TV on New Year’s Day after negotiations reached an impasse.
The Albuquerque ABC affiliate is still available free over the airwaves with an antenna and remains on the lineup of other satellite and cable providers.
But executives at KOAT-TV and its owner, Hearst Television, say DirecTV is offering too little money in exchange for rights to include the station in its lineup of channels.
“Unfortunately, the DirecTV 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,” KOAT-TV General Manager Mary Lynn Roper said in a statement.
But in an email to The New Mexican on Monday, Scott Huscher, a spokesman for DirecTV and its parent company AT&T, said Hearst is demanding “a significant increase in fees” for subscribers to watch the same shows they can stream online or receive with an antenna.
“We want to get KOAT back into our DirecTV customers’ lineups and share their immediate frustration,” he said.
The company declined to say how many subscribers are affected.
The dispute highlights tensions between local broadcasters and television providers amid shifts in the industry.
Federal regulations intended to protect local television require cable and satellite providers to pay for the right to carry local stations.
Local broadcasters have tried to raise fees in recent years while more viewers as well as advertising dollars move to cable stations, according to a report from the Carsey-Wolf Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Stations pay much of the fees to television networks for prime time programming and sporting events, the report says. But networks such as ABC are increasingly streaming the very same programming on their websites and apps.
For information on the type of antenna needed to receive KOAT-TV over the airwaves, visit antennaweb.org.
The Taos News is a sister-paper of The Santa Fe New Mexican.
