MUMBAI: After days of allegations and counterallegations, DirecTV and Tribune Broadcasting have reached an agreement bringing relief to millions of subscribers.
Without disclosing the terms of the deal, DirecTV and Tribune announced that the two have reached a retransmission consent deal for the next five years which allow‘s DirecTV to continue carrying all of Tribune‘s local stations and WGN America, Tribune‘s national cable network.
"We‘re pleased that Tribune and their creditors now recognise that all DirecTV wanted from day one was to pay fair market rates for their channels. It‘s unfortunate that Tribune was willing to hold our customers hostage in an attempt to extract excessive rates, but in the end we reached a fair deal at market rates similar to what we originally agreed to on 29 March. On behalf of our customers, we are very happy to close the deal and put this behind us," said DirecTV EVP Content, Strategy and Development Derek Chang.
Tribune restored all of their local signals and WGN America to DirecTV customers at approximately 9 pm ET.
"We are extremely pleased to have reached an agreement with DirecTV and to return our valuable news, entertainment and sports programming to DirecTV subscribers," said Tribune Broadcasting president Nils Larsen. "On behalf of Tribune Broadcasting, I want to thank viewers across all of our markets for their support, understanding and patience during the negotiating process”we truly regret the service interruptions of the last several days."
The agreement comes as baseball season is about to open, and enables DirecTV subscribers to see Chicago Cubs and White Sox baseball on WGN-TV in Chicago and on WGN America, as well as the Mets on WPIX-TV in New York, Phillies baseball on PHL17 in Philadelphia, and the Washington Nationals on WDCW-TV in Washington, D.C.
DirecTV subscribers also will again have access to the more than 700 hours of local news, weather, traffic, and sports coverage produced by Tribune‘s local television stations, as well as prime-time entertainment programming like "American Idol," "Glee," and "New Girl," on the company‘s Fox affiliates, and "One Tree Hill," "Vampire Diaries," and "Gossip Girl" on its CW affiliates.
