• by Karlene Lukovitz  @KLmarketdaily, December 14, 2020

Dish Network and Cox Media Group have signed a multiyear agreement, ending a blackout on Dish of 14 Cox stations in 10 markets that has been in place since July.

Apollo Global Management acquired the Cox Media Group stations from Northwest Broadcasting in 2019. Dish legally challenged the timing of Apollo’s termination of its Dish retransmission contract.

Prior to the latest dispute, for a time in early in 2020, Apollo took 18 stations in 10 markets off of Dish.

Meanwhile, Dish’s dispute with Nexstar Media Group — triggering what’s been called the largest local station blackout in TV history — continues.

Since early this month, Nexstar’s 164 stations have been blacked out in 120 Dish markets in 42 states, as the parties struggle to come to terms on a contract to replace one they signed in 2016.

Dish has said that Nexstar is asking more than $1 billion in fees for its television channels. 

The Nexstar programming currently unavailable to about 5.4 million Dish customers includes the WGN America cable network (acquired by Nexstar last year), NFL and college football, and programming from broadcast partners including CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox, the CW and MyNet.