Optimum Loses Nexstar Stations

At 5pm ET Friday, Nexstar stations were removed from Altice USA’s Optimum cable systems with the two unable to reach a new retransmission consent agreement. Nexstar said the blackout impacts 63 stations in 42 markets, including WPIX in NY as well as stations in Albany, NY; Charleston, WV; and Lubbock, TX. Cable network NewsNation is also dark across Optimum’s footprint.

Nexstar said it has tried to negotiate with Optimum since October, but the operator has demanded “special terms” that are out of step with its other MVPD relationships. Optimum is pushing back on expanded NewsNation carriage. It said it offered an extension to keep content on while negotiations continued, but was rebuffed by Nexstar.

The blackout comes as Optimum customers find themselves without MSG Networks, which were dropped at the start of the year. Less than a half hour after the Nexstar drop, MSG Networks issued a press release saying that Optimum has pulled their latest proposal and walked away from negotiations for the RSNs. “If you have been waiting, like we have, for them to do right by their customers—don’t wait any longer. Now is the time to switch to Verizon Fios who has a special offer for Optimum subscribers,” MSG Networks said. “Meanwhile, Optimum has been charging their over 1 million customers for local sports programming they have not been receiving and every subscriber should be credited at least $10 a month.”

Optimum pushed back against MSG’s claims it walked away from negotiating table, saying it invited MSG to its offices this week and requested a follow-up meeting with MSG execs today. “Instead of pushing out misleading narratives to the media, they should focus on continued negotiations,” a spokesperson said in a statement. Optimum added that it’s offsetting and defraying costs for MSG Networks’ Gotham app, saying “as we help offset these costs and drive customers to MSG’s own app, which brings more money to them, what has MSG done to help make their content more affordable?”

In the Nexstar negotiations, Optimum is pushing back against carriage of 24/7 news network NewsNation, including its expansion to “hundreds of thousands” of more customers. “Unfortunately, Nexstar is using an 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,” the operator said. “To illustrate the absurdity of this demand, we note that in any given month, 90% of customers – more than 1.2 million – never tune in to NewsNation, making it unfair to force customers to pay tens of millions of dollars for content they never watch and hold them hostage to force carriage of broadcast stations.”

Nexstar says Optimum wants special treatment. “Altice has consistently made unreasonable and unprecedented demands of Nexstar, culminating with their decision to walk away from the negotiations,” Michael Biard, Nexstar’s President and Chief Operating Officer, said in a statement. “Unfortunately, this seems to be a regular pattern of behavior for Altice, which dropped the MSG Network just last week, depriving millions of New York sports fans the opportunity to see their favorite teams in action. 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.”