Dish, Sinclair reach agreement, avoid channel blackouts

Dish Network and the Sinclair Broadcasting Group reached an agreement in principle that will prevented blackout of WTAT FOX24 and WMMP MyTV Charleston that could’ve started Thursday, a Sinclair representative confirmed.

The distributor and the broadcaster have given themselves two weeks to work out the terms of their new retransmission consent agreement, according to the assistant to Sinclair general counsel Barry Faber.

The negotiation, which is one of hundreds that play out every year between television station owners and service providers, became a public controversy when Sinclair and Dish put out warring press releases this week.

Colorado-based Dish claimed Sinclair is seeking a “massive price increase” for the right to broadcast its channels’ programming.Sinclair countered“the prices it is requesting for its extremely popular stations are substantially lower than the amounts Dish is paying for other far less popular channels it carries as a result of Dish’s flawed economic model.”

But apparently they were able to bridge the gap and Charleston-area Dish subscribers will be able to see NFL football, American Idol and other popular network programming after all.

Reach Brendan Kearney at 937-5906 and follow him on Twitter at @kearney_brendan.