Local channels

Not that I’m aware of. Can you attach such reports?

It's from a site called tv predictions.

This is a great question Bob to clarify this for you. These disputes are unfortunately a common occurrence in the pay television industry, often starting with programmers using consumers as a bargaining chip and ending with programming coming back on air Johan, DIRECTV Community Specialist

That is why a OTA antenna is a great backup.  

@Bob60 - I don't think the guy who runs that site has any special insight.  DirecTV has been in a fight with Nexstar (owner of a bunch of TV stations) and a couple of related companies over them conspiring to raise the carriage fees they charge to carry those stations, and actually sued them some months ago.  As noted, local station owners have gotten very aggressive about raising the carriage fees they demand (maybe because their revenue from ads is down) and depend on viewers blaming the carrier (cable company, satellite company, or in this case streaming company) for any blackout (the stations cutting the carrier off) to get them to push the carrier to just pay the fees.  Of course, if the carrier always just gave in, our subscription costs would go up even faster than they do now - and this is to pay for things you can get for free with an antenna.  Since a lot more of the existing Nexstar carriage agreements apparently expire soon, more stations are likely to be blacked out.  Congress (unfortunately) made a change to allow this some years ago - they are supposedly looking at the issue but at the rate they move, at best nothing will happen about it for a long time.

@Bob60 

Best to get the facts than websites that do not have all the info so tend to go on opinion.

DirecTV and Nexstar (owner of many local affiliate stations) are going through negotiations (again).

During any carriage disputes, or when the current agreement is ending, the channel owner (Nexstar in this case) can choose to either leave the channel on as a sign of good faith or pull the feed as a negotiating tactic to leverage customers.

Yes more often local channel owners are choosing to pull the feed. Ultimately that is Nextar's decision, not DirecTV's or that "TV Predictions" website.

To check information on negotiations that affect your area, you can check the official webpage: https://www.directv.com/tvpromise/

My opinion is why should TV providers, and by extension us customers, keep paying higher rates for channels that are free over the regular airways? I didn't go to pay TV for my free locals.

Hi, I have DirecTV Stream and live in a market where the local ABC affiliate is owned by Nexstar.  My understanding (but please correct me if I'm wrong) is that DirecTV Stream has a "network-wide" contract with each of the major networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox), that was "negotiated on behalf of the local affiliates" and not negotiated by the local affiliates individually (e.g. how most other service providers negotiate their contracts, including DirecTV Satellite). 

As the contract that is about to expire is between DirecTV and Nexstar, would not DirecTV and ABC (as a whole network) still have to honor the existing "network-wide" contract that (I think) is in place between DirecTV Stream and ABC (and therefore not take away the Nextstar-owned ABC affiliate)?

Should also note that a couple of years ago, I had Hulu with Live TV (I switched to DirecTV stream about a year ago).  Hulu had the same dispute with Nexstar and I lost the same Local ABC affiliate for about 2 months.  For those 2 months, Hulu replaced the local affiliate's signal with a "National ABC" feed.  Although in that situation Hulu and ABC are both owned by Disney (nothing like "corporate synergy" LOL), I wonder if DirecTV Stream will be able to do the same thing, given that (I think) DirecTV stream has a "network-wide" contract with ABC.

That’s not the case.  I believe that a couple of years ago the major networks attempted to get their affiliates to join into an umbrella carriage agreement, but that failed because the individual station owners want to be able to negotiate their own carriage contracts, and an umbrella agreement would take away their negotiating power. So the network contract applies only to the networks’ O&O (owned and operated) stations - the ones the network itself owns.  The network contract does cover access to on-demand (for network programming) and access to the network’s own app.  For the other affiliate stations, and additional agreement with the station owner is required, and many of them have become quite aggressive in the pricing they demand and their willingness to black out carriers. 

Nexstar is a special case - they are the largest owner of stations, the are the.majority (and controlling) owner of The CW, and partial owner of some other content providers, so they are particularly powerful and have been using that.  

Whether the network can and will provide a network feed depends on the network, what their affiliate agreement is, and how willing they are to tick off the affiliate’s owner.  I don’t think it’s too common that it happens. 

I also wonder if my local MyNetworkTV affiliate (The ABC affiliate's "sister station", also owned by Nexstar) and other such "non-major" affiliates in other DMA's will also be in play to be added to DirecTV Stream during this round of negotiations. We currently don't receive that channel at all, maybe the negotiations (when and if an agreement is ever reached) will result in such channels being added to DirecTV Stream (they are only available on DirecTV satellite).  However, the "must carry" FCC rules do not apply to streaming services.

Though Nexstar is big, my state doesn't have them. Makes me wonder when Tegna's agreement comes up again as it has been a couple years since their version of this situation.

Lucky you for now, but as you said, we’re all been hit at some point and going to get hit again sooner or later.  Tegna owns the Fox and CW affiliates here.

I really would like DirecTV to figure out their LCC (the successor to the AM21) so I could integrate OTA antenna to the box itself so I wouldn't have to switch inputs (plus could still record). That being reliable would make a huge dent in these situations I feel.

That is unless those agreements are requiring DirecTV to not produce the option anymore.