Programming negotiation spats continue to come to light as the waning hours of 2016 are closing in. Variety is reporting that NBCUniversal and Charter are locked in a battle that could mean that millions of Charter subs could see their NBCU channels go dark on Jan. 1. That day is a Sunday, so football fans could be particularly irritated if they can’t catch the game between the Green Bay Packers and Detroit Lions scheduled on NBC.
“With both parties at an impasse, Comcast-owned NBCU has prepped a marketing campaign designed to appeal to Charter customers to pressure the cable provider into taking a more flexible negotiating stance,” the Variety article reads. “That campaign was set to launch late Thursday afternoon with a crawl that would run across the screens of Charter’s Spectrum customers watching NBCU channels, alerting them to the possibility of a programming blackout.”
“NBCUniversal values its partnership with Charter Spectrum, our third largest distributor,” an NBCU spokesperson tells Variety in a statement. “Charter Spectrum has been unyielding in its demand for terms superior to those agreed to by the rest of the industry, including larger distributors. Given this position, we feel the responsibility to inform viewers that Charter Spectrum may drop NBCUniversal’s networks at the end of the year, including NBC, Telemundo, USA, Bravo, and hit shows including the #1 show on TV ‘Sunday Night Football,’ ‘WWE,’ ‘the Golden Globes,’ ‘This is Us’, and more.”
If negotiations fall through, NBCU would require Charter cut the feed. A Charter spokesperson declined to comment, according to Variety.
Another retrans drama that’s happening right now involves Hearst and DirecTV, as well as Cable ONE. Read more about that here.
