UPDATED: DirecTV will not be able to show Notre Dame's football season opener Saturday live from Dublin, Ireland vs. Navy in more than 30 markets in which the local NBC affiliate broadcast station is owned by Nexstar Broadcast Group, after all.
This comes as a surprise to Next TV, which was told by the satellite TV company on Thursday that DirecTV customers in those Nexstar/NBC markets (at least those with a 4K TV) would still be able to see the game live via a dedicated national 4K channel arrangement established with Notre Dame and NBC Sports back in 2016.
Turns out, NBC's deal with Nexstar apparently supersedes the agreement with DirecTV, which puts Notre Dame games on 4K/UHD channels 105 or 106, depending on the week.
"The game remains available over the air, streaming on Peacock and potentially on NBCSports.com and the NBC Sports App," said a DirecTV rep, who didn't explain what "potentially" means.
Whatever -- we're done following up with these guys for today. DirecTV announced a new sponsorship deal with Notre Dame Thursday, and we thought tub-thumping that bit of news was conspicuous, given that the biggest station blackout in pay TV history was going to keep a lot of Notre Dame fans -- and Navy ones -- from seeing this big game full of golden helmets.
More than 160 Nexstar stations have been blacked out on DirecTV since early July. The blackout extends to earlier impasses between DirecTV and Mission Broadcasting and White Knight Broadcasting, both of which have management services agreements with Nextstar.
DirecTV has complained to the FCC, claiming this amounts to one monolithic retrans dispute involving more than 200 stations.
Here's what's still useable from what we wrote Thursday. Next TV, of course, regrets the mess -- we owe it to you to do a bit less trusting and more verifying next time we deal with these fellows:
Earlier this week, DirecTV pressed its complaint with the FCC that Nexstar is using management services agreements with Mission and White Knight to effectively add scale to its retrans negotiating might. The "blackout" extends to more than 200 stations when those two broadcasters are factored in. That makes it the biggest pay TV station blackout ever.
Nexstar's response to that FCC missive has all the hyperbolic haymakers of a pay TV carriage war in mid-flight.
“With yesterday’s FCC filing, DirecTV continues its campaign to thwart fair marketplace negotiations and instead use the impasse it created to pursue its broader regulatory agenda," Nexstar said in a statement sent to our sibling publication, Broadcasting + Cable.
"DirecTV has a history of this behavior. Since 2019 it has dropped more than 150 channels or networks from its systems for various lengths of time," the station group added. "In total, these drops have resulted in more than an entire year’s worth of programming being lost to viewersTrue to form, DirecTV has manufactured this crisis by declining an extension that would have kept all of Nexstar’s stations available throughout this impasse. "
