WPIX/11 dropped from Optimum systems in new carriage dispute

WPIX/11 went dark in Optimum cable homes late Friday, when its parent company, Altice, pulled the station's signal from New York-area cable systems. Dozens of other stations owned by Ch. 11 parent Nexstar were also dropped by Altice, affecting some 4.6 million subscribers in 21 states.

In a statement released just after the blackout began, Altice said that "despite Optimum's best efforts to reach a fair and reasonable agreement with Nexstar, the owners of multiple broadcast stations [including Ch. 11], their content has been removed from Optimum TV lineups, effective 5:00PM ET today. Optimum offered an extension to keep Nexstar's content on the air while we continued to negotiate to reach a fair deal for our customers, but Nexstar refused."

In another carriage dispute, Altice also dropped MSG Networks from Optimum  on Jan. 1 — MSG airs games of the Islanders, Rangers, Devils and Knicks. That dispute remained unresolved. 

Nexstar chief executive Michael Biard  released his own statement, first posted in Variety, which read in part, "Altice has consistently made unreasonable and unprecedented demands of Nexstar, " while adding "we understand the difficulty of Altice’s financial situation, burdened as it is by billions in debt, but the solution isn’t to force Optimum subscribers to continually pay more while getting less."

Altice accused Nexstar, which owns 63 TV stations, "of anti-consumer negotiation tactic — tying local channels to less popular ones — requiring Optimum and its customers to pay for channels like NewsNation, which has essentially no viewership, in order to continue carrying Nexstar broadcast stations in various markets across the country."

Carriage disputes like these are fairly commonplace in the cable industry — struggling to retain subscribers who are cutting the so-called cord and to contain costs. For example, Disney-owned properties, including ESPN, went dark in 11 million DirecTV homes last September, and a year before that in Charter Spectrum homes.

Those were resolved relatively quickly but Altice indicated in its own statement that this dispute may last for a while. It dismissed Ch. 11 programs as "content [that] consists of reruns and syndicated content, not original programming." Moreover, it noted that Mets telecasts will continue to air on SNY, while "for those looking to watch the handful of games aired on PIX-11, they will be available over the air with an antenna for free." Spring training is, of course, still a little over a month away, while the regular season begins in March.