Fox on Sunday started broadcasting a crawl across some of its channels informing viewers that if the corporation can’t come to a “fair arrangement” with DirecTV by midnight on December 2, some of their “favorite Fox content” may no longer be available. Fox and DirecTV are still in intensive negotiations before their carriage agreement expires.
Fox stated in a statement on Sunday that it “remains dedicated to achieving a fair agreement with DirecTV for the continuing distribution of our networks.” “We regret that DirecTV continues to demand extraordinary special treatment that reflects a major change to our long-standing partnership and is out of pace with marketplace terms, despite our best efforts for months,” the statement reads.
The NFL and the Big Ten College Football Championship on Fox, the FIFA World Cup on Fox and FS1, Fox local news, and other programs would no longer be available if negotiations failed, Fox stated in the statement. As a result, the network felt forced to warn viewers.
The statement continued, “While Fox continues to seek an arrangement that is advantageous to all parties, our focus is ensuring viewers can access all Fox Sports, Fox Entertainment, and local Fox station content. The business closed by urging DirecTV customers to go to KeepFox.com, a website that provides information on how customers may get in touch with the cable network to maintain their channels.
The Fox owned and operated local stations as well as FS1, FS1, Big Ten Network, Fox Deportes, Fox Soccer Plus (PPV), and Fox Deportes would all be affected by the prospective expiration. Fox Business Network and Fox News Channel would still be accessible.
Similar circumstances arose in October when Fox and Altice cable network could not agree on prices. This important carriage war involving Dish Network and Disney-owned networks like ABC, ESPN, and FX, as well as between Roku and the National Cable Television Cooperative, was settled shortly after that one. The last time Fox dropped transmissions was in 2019 when stations were offline for 10 days due to Dish Network.
On Monday, DirecTV responded, saying they are trying very hard to come to an arrangement and criticizing Fox’s “old programmer scare tactics of putting subscribers in the middle of contract renewals.”
According to the statement from DirecTV, Fox alone is responsible for any disruption of Fox programming at this time. “DirecTV has no plans to take any Fox content down. The best way for everyone to “Keep Fox” is for Fox to continue providing it.
“Based on our good track record with Fox, we’re optimistic we’ll reach an agreement before any potential disruption,” the addendum continued. In fact, over the past several years, we have renewed almost 200 local FOX stations similar to them.
“Unfortunately, the same old, worn-out coder scare tactics of forcing customers into the middle of contract renewals tend to die hard,” the rest of the statement said. Since the turn of the century, Fox has used this strategy to annoy customers in an effort to raise their guaranteed rates, even though most renewals are usually completed without any complications. The same is true of other recent Fox renewals with Roku and the National Cable Television Cooperative, among others. Just last month, Fox warned Altice USA consumers before settling without withdrawing signals.