The pay TV market was hit with yet another significant program licensing impasse Friday when Dish Network announced that broadcaster Hearst Television has pulled 37 of its network affiliates in 27 markets off of Dish's program guide.
"Hearst continues to raise its prices despite its declining viewership and lower-quality content," said Gary Schanman, executive VP and group president of video services for Dish, in a statement.
Dish also said that Hearst is "demanding tens of millions of dollars in rate increases."
Hearst, meanwhile, followed up with a statement of its own: "We have made significant investments to deliver top tier programming to our viewers and Dish is seeking the right to carry our stations at below market rates, which is neither fair nor reasonable. To be clear, we have not 'blacked out' our station. You may continue to receive our station for free, over the air, or by other satellite distribution, and, where available, from cable operators."
With the college football and NFL seasons now both underway, the Hearst-Dish impasse joins two other major ongoing pay TV distribution skirmishes: ESPN, ABC and over 20 other Disney channels have been unavailable on Charter's Spectrum TV service since last week; and more than 200 network affiliates owned or managed by Nexstar Media Group are blacked out on DirecTV.
Dish identifies Disney and Nexstar's role in these kerfuffle's as "other recent examples of programmers using the same anti-consumer tactics" as Hearst.
Echoing comments from Charter last week, Dish called the current pay TV dialectic between programmers and operators a "broken system," adding that as the former "continue to hold distributors hostage, customers will end up being impacted the most.
"We'll continue to negotiate for a fair deal to provide the best value for our customers," Schanman added. "Hearst is an important long-term partner for us, and we hope they'll come to a reasonable agreement and restore their channels for our customers as quickly as possible."
