The removal of around 160 Nexstar Media Group stations from DirecTV’s programming grid went down as a sleepy afterthought in early July, with the consensus TMT-industry feeling that the two sides — already at odds — better work this out by early September, when football starts and there's actually something on broadcast television to watch.
Well, here we are, Thursday, September 7, with the NFL kicking off its 2023 regular season with an NBC-televised matchup between the Detroit Lions and defending Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs at 8:20 p.m. ET at Arrowhead Stadium. (The game, which resulted in a 21-20 upset victory for the upstart Lions, was also live-streamed on Peacock.)
Nexstar owns 33 NBC affiliates. And it controls four others through management services contracts with small Mission Broadcasting and tiny White Knight Broadcasting. (DirecTV is actively complaining to the FCC about this latter arrangement.)
Also Read: Sinclair Deal Restores Carriage of Nexstar-Owned CW Affiliates on DirecTV Stream in 21 Markets
A rep with insight into the DirecTV-Nexstar dialectic told Next TV Thursday afternoon that the two sides were talking, but there was no indicator of any immediate breakthrough.
A full slate of NFL games is set to air Sunday on CBS, Fox and NBC. (Monday's Monday Night Football matchup on ESPN will be impacted by a separate carriage/retrans impasse involving Charter Communications and Disney.)
And it's beginning to dawn on America that Football Sunday will face disruption.
On Friday, for example, the Sacramento Bee alerted DirecTV-subscribing San Francisco 49ers fans that Sunday's game against the Pittsburgh Steelers will be blacked out on Fox affiliate KTXL-TV, another Nexstar station.
DirecTV has, according to a recent Leichtman Research Group estimate, around 12.4 million remaining subscribers across DirecTV satellite TV, DirecTV Stream and U-verse platforms.
Presumably, some of those customers have over-the-air antennas.
It’s been a busy week at Nexstar headquarters in Irving, Texas, including the renewal of an agreement with the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers to broadcast 11 games locally on KTLA Los Angeles, as well as the reupping of Nexstar’s affiliation agreement with Fox.
In the meantime, DirecTV -- which is competing with YouTube TV and Fubo in a marketing race among vMVPD suppliers to be most sporty -- released the latest installment of its TV commercial campaign featuringTravis Kelsey. The spot, part of DirecTV's "Overly Direct Spokesperson" media blitz, conspicuously omits the injured Chiefs tight end telling DirecTV, "You're doing football on TV wrong."
