More than 200 local CBS affiliate stations have returned to Fubo, ending a two-month standoff and a little more than two weeks after the CBS Affiliate Board finally signed off on parent Paramount Global’s revised master broadcast retransmission agreement for live-streamed pay TV services.
At this point, most CBS stations have returned to Fubo, the vMVPD said, which has an updated list of local broadcast affiliates it carries here.
Paramount had negotiated a retrans deal with Fubo for carriage of local CBS stations. But at the beginning of February, the CBS Affiliate Board rejected that arrangement. Affiliate board member stations groups Sinclair Broadcast Group, Nexstar Media Group, Gray Television, E.W. Scripps Co., Tegna, Hearst Television and Cox Media Grouo removed their CBS affiliates from Fubo, and Fubo began running Paramount's national CBS feed in affected markets.
The Paramount agreement’s rejection marked a broader disenchantment by local station owners of master retrans agreements carved out by the affiliated networks' owners themselves with vMVPDs. Affiliate owners want to be able to negotiate these deals themselves, or at least have a much larger voice in the negotiations.
“We firmly believe that we should control our own destiny with regard to the virtual MVPDs, instead of allowing the network to negotiate on our behalf,” Nexstar chief operating officer Tom Carter said during his company’s fourth-quarter earnings call on February 28. “Given the lack of regulation in the digital world, it’s important that we remain united as an industry.”
For Paramount and CBS, the revolt threatened to spill out onto other digital arrangements with the likes of Paramount Plus, Hulu Plus Live TV and YouTube TV.
Meanwhile, The Walt Disney Co. caught its own flak, with Sinclair rejecting its vMVPD retrans terms and pulling its ABC affiliates off Hulu. That kerfuffle still hasn't been settled. ▪️
