Dish loses 153 Sinclair TV stations after retrans negotiations fail to produce

“It is impossible to answer this question accurately”, said Sinclair, “although it is certainly possible that Dish Network will never carry these stations in the future”.

DISH extended its contract with 23 local non-Sinclair controlled stations for which Sinclair had been attempting to negotiate.

DISH and Sinclair had been making steady progress in their recent negotiations, and DISH was hopeful that they would come to a mutual agreement to renew carriage of the Sinclair local stations.

Despite reaching an agreement on rates and all other terms for the carriage of the Sinclair local stations, DISH said that Tuesday afternoon Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc.

The Dish Network took El Paso TV stations Channel 14-KFOX and Channel 4-KDBC off of its satellite network Tuesday because of a contract dispute with Sinclair Broadcasting Group, the station’s parent company. The stations are owned or managed by Sinclair and are viewed by approximately five million customers.

Viewers can still see our stations on DirecTV, on cable providers such as Suddenlink and Comcast and free over the air. We do not know if or when Dish will resume carriage of these stations. We apologize for the inconvenience and hope to return to Dish Network homes soon.

DISH has blacked out more than 150 local television stations spread across 79 different markets.

Dish Tweeted from its Dish Answers account: “Despite our offer to extend negotiations without impacting our loyal customers, Sinclair has chosen to reject the extension and initiate the largest local channel blackout in the history of television”.