Dozens of local TV stations owned by Tegna, most of them NBC and CBS affiliates, have gone dark on DirecTV in a carriage dispute.
The companies failed to reach an agreement before a 5 p.m. PT deadline Thursday. The outage will immediately affect roughly 5 million customers in markets across the U.S.
DirecTV was spun off by AT&T in 2021 into a privately held entity that is 30% owned by private equity firm TPG. DirecTV’s traditional satellite business, along with the internet-delivered DirecTV stream and the U-Verse cable systems combined have nearly 12 million subscribers in the U.S., according to recent analysts’ estimates.
The Tegna battle affects about 40% of that base, sources indicated to Deadline, with 70% of affected stations being affiliated with either CBS or NBC.
Read more on deadline.com