The Puerto Rico-based TV stations WAPA Television and WAPA Deportes were restored to DirecTV on the island after about a six-week outage, under a new multi-year agreement on retransmission-consent payments signed today.
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The stations were dropped by the AT&T-owned service on May 4, with AT&T claiming that Hemisphere Media Group wanted to "nearly double" its retransmission fees.
“WAPA has been Puerto Rico’s ratings leader for nine consecutive years, and we’re pleased to have reached a new agreement with DirecTV so our viewers can continue enjoying the #1 television network and leading sports channel in Puerto Rico,” Alan J. Sokol, CEO of Hemisphere Media Group, said in a statement. “We look forward to our continued partnership for years to come.”
“We have had a longstanding relationship with WAPA and WAPA Deportes in service of the local Puerto Rico community,” added José Juan Dávila, VP and general manager for AT&T Puerto Rico/USVI, in the release. “We are pleased to be able to restore these channels to our customers.”
And from WAPA president Javier Maynulet: “We sincerely thank our viewers for their continued support and loyalty during this difficult time, and we regret the inconvenience this has caused. We are committed to continuing to serve the Puerto Rican community the way WAPA has done for the past 64 years—by delivering the best news and entertainment programming to our people.”
During the outage, WAPA TV remained available over the air and on other distributors, including Dish Network.
This article was updated to reflect the pact covers carriage on Puerto Rico.
