The forecast is stormy as The Weather Channel and DirecTV face contract expiration on Tuesday morning.
The Weather Channel said the No. 1 satellite-TV provider could drop it at 12:01 a.m. on Jan. 14. The parties' multiyear deal ended on Dec. 31, but an extension has kept the service in front of DirecTV's 20 million subscribers into the new year.
Jennifer Dangar, The Weather Co.'s president of distribution and business development, said this is not the first time that The Weather Channel has been in a contract dispute. However, it marks the first time that it "seems imminent" that the network -- the nation’s most widely distributed linear cable network with some 100 million subs -- will be dropped.
Dangar -- noting that The Weather Channel has always been respectful in seeking “extremely reasonable rates" -- said there haven’t been any conversations with DirecTV since Friday Jan. 10, when the distributor asked the programmer to take “a double-digit haircut on our price.”
