Standard Media Group Issues Statement Regarding Expiration of Distribution Agreement with DISH Network

Paducah Television Operations LLC dba Standard Media Group, the owner of four local broadcast stations, issued a statement regarding the expiration of its distribution agreement with DISH Network (“DISH”). Despite Standard Media’s willingness to extend the current agreement and continue negotiating, effective 7:00 p.m. ET on November 11, 2022, DISH decided to drop the stations and deny its subscribers the important local community programming of all four broadcast stations owned by Standard Media. This action followed not only DISH’s refusal to extend the current agreement to allow more time to negotiate, but also DISH’s continued insistence that Standard Media be paid at levels far below its current rate despite increased programming costs at broadcast stations.

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In an effort to make the facts of this situation clear to the public, Standard Media issued the following statement:

Over the last year, Standard Media has worked hard to reach a deal with DISH. Throughout this period, the parties have agreed to multiple extensions to permit negotiations to continue without an impact on viewers. Even though the parties continue to negotiate, DISH has taken the inexplicable position that it will no longer carry the stations during the negotiations. Our stations therefore will no longer be accessible through DISH. This is DISH’s choice, and not what we prefer.

With just four local stations, Standard Media is a small station owner. We take seriously our responsibility in providing critical and current news to local communities. While DISH is willing to resell our valuable content that drives their viewership, they do not want to pay for it. Being paid fairly for our content allows us to employ local journalists and produce hours of news daily that our communities rely on. DISH’s approach falls hardest on smaller broadcasters like us, who lack the scale to push back effectively against a vastly larger company with a national footprint. This denies important resources to our local stations and actually hurts the quality of the content on which DISH relies.

We regularly negotiate with each multichannel video programming distributor in our markets to carry our broadcast signals. Standard Media has successfully negotiated agreements with all other distributors with no disruption to our viewers, but DISH is attempting to strongarm our stations into a contract that will harm local journalism and service to our communities.

While DISH may try to spin the facts otherwise, it is not local affiliates that are the cause of ever-increasing pay television rates. Our network affiliation fees are going up every year, and we are not being fairly compensated for our valuable network and local programming while DISH overpays for national cable-net programs. DISH is denying subscribers access to important content including local news, live sports, weather and network programming for all four of Standard Media’s broadcast stations. The loss of our stations’ programming on DISH is solely DISH’s decision.

Standard Media will continue to negotiate in good faith, as we always have, with the hope that DISH will enter into a reasonable agreement.