Nexstar vs. DirecTV
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As of 4AM this morning, most of the Nexstar stations are still off of DirecTV across the country as the two sides fight over money.
Nexstar wants DirecTV to pay more money per subscriber and DirecTV does not.
In the end, the two sides will agree on a price somewhere in the middle and a couple months down the road, DirecTV customers will see their bill go up.
Of course, this is all happening as Nexstar is in the process of buying all the Tribune stations and adding them to their portfolio.
This could be a prime example as to why this deal should not go through.
When Nexstar takes over the Tribune stations, it will give them even bigger bargaining power with a much larger footprint in the TV world.
As FTVLive told you yesterday, the Nexstar stations are all rolling a crawl, telling DirecTV customers who to call and why they can no longer see the station.
But, if they can’t see the crawl why run it?
Nexstar insiders say that the reason for the crawl is that the Senate and Congress people are on break and back home for the July 4th holiday weekend. “The crawl is for them, not the viewers,” said a Nexstar insider.
In other words, all the Nexstar stations are running a crawl in the chance that one of the two US Senators might tune into the TV station while they are home. Really?
Also, the stations are taking a page out of the Donald Trump playbook on their website. Trump often tweets, calling himself “Your favorite President.”
Here is a banner posted on the WRIC website, in which they refer to themselves as “Your favorite station.”
Never mind the fact that WRIC is often in 3rd place in the market. Like we said, straight from the Trump playbook.
The WRIC banner is all part of what corporate is dictating the stations to do. Check out this banner from WIVB in Buffalo and you might notice some similarities:
Nexstar tells viewers they are your local station, but as you can see, across the country they use the same cookie cutter.
As to how the stations are told to handle the DirecTV outage. FTVLive obtained the internal memo sent to the staff at Nexstar’s WTNH:
Like we said, the two sides will agree on a price, people will see their bills go up and the rich get richer.
