One week ago, the MVPD controlled by Altice USA dropped the MSG Network. At 5pm Eastern today, it blocked access to 63 Nexstar Media Group-owned broadcast TV stations across 42 markets, as well as NewsNation.
The latest retransmission consent battle, this time a fight pitting the nation’s biggest owner of TV stations versus Optimum, has just begun.
Some 42 DMAs are impacted, in addition to its cable television news network. Mission Broadcasting-owned WPIX-11 in New York, which Nexstar operates via a shared services agreement, is also off of Optimum — perhaps the most significant result of the impasse, given Optimum’s major presence in Westchester and Nassau Counties of New York.
As such, roughly two million subscribers across the country now face the absence of Nexstar-owned stations until a new carriage agreement is reached. Aside from the New York metropolitan area, Optimum markets where Nexstar has stations include Hartford, and Greenville, N.C.
On a microsite created by Optimum to keep customers appraised of the negotiations, the MVPD says it has “worked tirelessly” on behalf of its customers to reach an agreement with Nexstar. However, “they’ve refused to offer a deal that is fair for our customers. As a result, we no longer carry their channels.”
And, Optimum is pointing customers who seek Nexstar content to get Fubo, the sports-focused virtual MVPD that was acquired earlier this week by The Walt Disney Co.
Nexstar has a much different take on the situation.
“Altice has consistently made unreasonable and unprecedented demands of Nexstar, culminating with their decision to walk away from the negotiations,” said Michael Biard, Nexstar’s President/Chief Operating Officer. “Unfortunately, this seems to be a regular pattern of behavior for Altice.”
Biard also took aim at “the difficulty of Altice’s financial situation, burdened as it is by billions in debt,” adding that the solution to the company’s fiscal woes “isn’t to force Optimum subscribers to continually pay more while getting less.”
When any resolution between Altice USA’s Optimum and Nexstar may come is could be anyone’s guess. A source tells RBR+TVBR that Optimum “walked away from negotiations today unilaterally and have been pretty unresponsive throughout.”
Nexstar noted in a press release issued late Friday that it has tried to engage in good faith negotiations with Altice since October 2024, “only to have Altice refuse to do so by repeatedly demanding special terms that are wildly out of step with both our longstanding relationship and the cable television marketplace.”