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. "chose to begin the largest local channel blackout in the history of television, blocking DISH customers’ access to 129 local channels in 79 markets across 36 states and the District of Columbia, and intentionally harming and exploiting millions of innocent consumers to gain negotiating leverage for carriage of an unrelated cable channel that it hopes to acquire but does not own today."
In Chattanooga, NewsChannel 9 is a Sinclair outlet.
Channel 9 had this message on its website:
"The agreement with Dish Network to carry stations which Sinclair Broadcast Group owns or provides services expired on August 25, 2015 at 5:00 pm EDT. As a result Dish stopped carrying these stations after that date. We do not know if or when Dish will resume carriage of these stations.
"We regret the inconvenience this will cause Dish Network subscribers who want to continue to watch the extremely popular programming that airs on these stations.
"We wish to remind these subscribers that numerous other means exist for receiving our stations, including DirecTV and at least one cable television company, as well as for free over-the air.
"We suggest that you contact Dish Network by calling them at (855)-318-0572, or through their website at www.dish.com/contact, Facebook at www.facebook.com/DISH, or on Twitter at www.twitter.com/dish, and let them know you want them to carry these local stations and receive their popular programming."
Warren Schlichting, DISH senior vice president of programming, said, “We have agreed to rates and all terms to carry Sinclair’s local stations. But Sinclair is blacking out 129 local stations in an effort to negotiate a carriage agreement for an unrelated cable channel that it hopes to acquire, but does not own today. Sinclair rejected our extension offer and has chosen to use innocent consumers as pawns to gain leverage for the economic benefit of Sinclair, while causing substantial harm and disruption to the lives of consumers.”
He said 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. In that spirit, DISH offered another short-term contract extension to Sinclair that would include a retroactive “true-up” when new rates were agreed upon, and would preserve the ability of DISH customers to access the Sinclair local stations while our negotiations continued. The “true-up” would ensure that Sinclair was made whole at the new rates for the period of any contract extension.
R. Stanton Dodge, DISH executive vice president and general counsel, said, “Since we offered to retroactively true them up when new rates were agreed upon, Sinclair had nothing to lose and consumers had everything to gain from an extension of our existing contract that would allow negotiations to continue. Instead, Sinclair rejected our offer and has chosen to use innocent consumers as pawns to gain leverage for the economic benefit of Sinclair, while causing substantial harm and disruption to the lives of those very same consumers who ultimately will bear the brunt of the unreasonable terms sought by Sinclair.”