Sunday marks two months since KSL-Channel 5 disappeared from DirecTV’s lineup … and there’s still no end in sight.
“There's been some movement,” said Tanya Vea, KSL's vice president and general manager. But that movement is “very slow, and [there] doesn't appear to be an end to this anytime soon.”
As is always the case in this kind of dispute, KSL insists that DirecTV is refusing to pay a fair price; DirecTV insists that KSL is demanding more than it's worth.
Since 1992, cable and satellite providers have been required to obtain the permission of broadcast stations to carry their signal — and “retransmission consent” generally comes after the cable/broadcast company agrees to pay for that signal.