With roughly four hours to go before NBC’s coverage of Super Bowl LVI was to begin, Mediacom cable TV service subscribers in the Minneapolis-St. Paul DMA, Arizona’s Prescott Valley region, and the home of the NFC Champions from 1994-2015 have regained the opportunity to watch the “Big Game” without having to resort to “rabbit ears” or other alternatives.
It ends a 409-day “blackout” due to the absence of a retransmission consent agreement, and comes just days after an agreement with DISH was reached — an action that only further suggests that a TEGNA takeover by Standard General in partnership with Apollo Global Management is coming soon.
The nation’s fifth-largest MVPD on Sunday agreed to a new retransmission consent agreement with TEGNA.
This resolves a “blackout,” required by law in the absence of a carriage agreement, that has impacted 12 DMAs since New Year’s Eve 2020.
In a joint statement, the extreme duration of the impasse was not noted.
“We are pleased to announce that we have reached a new agreement,” Lynn Beall, EVP/COO of Media Operations at TEGNA and Mediacom EVP of Programming and
Human Resources Italia Commisso-Weinand said in a joint statement. “We appreciate the patience of our viewers while we worked to reach an agreement.”
While the executives note that the new retrans accord brings Mediacom subscribers “access to valuable and important live local news, live local and national sports and popular network content,” it is sports — namely NBC’s coverage of Super Bowl LVI and, to a lesser extent, the 2022 Winter Olympic Games — that likely drove the two parties to a Sunday pact signing.
That said, the end of the “blackout” of TEGNA’s stations on Mediacom comes less than a week after DISH and the company formerly owned as Gannett resolved their bitter differences over a carriage accord. The timing of the DISH deal coincides with industry rumors that TEGNA, which has acknowledged interest in the company by Soohyung Kim-led Standard General. That entity is teaming up with Apollo, the controlling investor in Cox Media Group, to make the TEGNA deal happen.
With two big retransmission consent disputes resolves, Standard General and Apollo now have an obstruction-free environment to make a transaction happen.
Mediacom is privately owned by empresario Rocco Commisso, owner of Italian pro soccer team ACF Fiorentina and the MLS’s reborn New York Cosmos. Mediacom’s 2019 operating income was $808 million. According to the company’s annual fiscal report, Mediacom’s revenues were $2.031 billion for the year ended December 31, 2019.
