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How CBS May Be Benefiting From Its Beef With AT&T

Jul 24, 2019  •  Post A Comment

Since CBS stations were blacked out early Saturday on AT&T’s DirecTV, DirecTV Now and U-Verse systems as the two companies remain at an impasse in their retransmission negotiations, the network says it has seen a “dramatic spike in new subscribers” to its CBS All Access streaming service.

The network stopped short of saying the spike could be attributed to the standoff with AT&T, but seems to imply as much.

“During this time, CBS programming is available by switching providers or via CBS.com and CBS All Access, which saw a dramatic spike in new subscribers this past weekend compared to the same weekend a year ago,” CBS said in a press release. “More information can be found at KeepCBS.com.”

The release goes on to present some of the key points on the network’s side of the dispute.

“AT&T has dropped 178 stations in more than 120 markets across 14 programmers in 2019 alone,” CBS notes. “During the seven-year term of its recently expired deal with DirecTV, CBS successfully reached more than 300 retransmission consent deals with over 145 other partners. In fact, CBS has only gone dark with two providers in its history before AT&T.

“Also in 2019, AT&T has had public contract disputes with Viacom and A&E.”

CBS adds that the network is “ready and available to negotiate and as of today its offer of an unconditional 30-day extension still stands.”

One Comment

  1. Why is the Smithsonian Channel wrapped into this godawful mess?

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