Dispute ends WKBN, WYFX on DirecTV

By GUY D’ASTOLFO

dastolfo@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

As of Thursday, DirecTV customers in the Mahoning Valley began seeing blacked-out television screens instead of WKBN-TV 27 and WYFX-FOX.

The blackout is the result of a national contract dispute that is affecting more than 120 television stations owned by telecom company Nexstar in 97 markets – including the two Youngstown stations.

After DirecTV and its owner AT&T failed to reach a new deal with Nexstar, all Nexstar’s channels in the U.S. fell blank on the Fourth of July. DirecTV customers were left unable to view those stations’ national programming and local news, instead seeing only a message from DirecTV stating that Nexstar had removed the channel.

Both companies are pointing blame at the other for the blackout.

AT&T says it offered Nexstar more money to keep the channels available. Nexstar says it offered AT&T an extension to keep the channels up while negotiations continued, but AT&T dropped the channels.

Many people took to Twitter on the holiday to demand the channels be restored.

WKBN posted a statement on its website explaining its stance on the dispute.

“In spite of our request for an extension to continue to negotiate a resolution and a new agreement, DirecTV unilaterally and abruptly dropped WKBN and WYFX at 11:59 p.m. on July 3,” said David Coy, general manager of WKBN and WYFX, and also WYTV-33, in a statement to The Vindicator.

“We have been negotiating for several weeks and have made significant progress, and although we have significant issues to be resolved, we offered a 30-day unconditional extension to the current agreement so that we could continue to negotiate and avoid service interruption for our viewers. In response, AT&T and DirecTV refused our offer and unilaterally pulled our stations.”

Information from the Associated Press was used in this story.