DirecTV lawsuit accuses KSNF, KODE owners of conspiracy, collusion

(From DirecTV)

DIRECTV today took a stand for its customers by mounting a legal challenge in what it charges is an illegal conspiracy among three broadcasters to increase content costs for free over-the-air TV. The fees distributors pay for permission to offer their customers local broadcast stations have soared more than 5,000% in the past 17 years and is the single largest source of rising costs facing video consumers today. 

When any distributors resist extreme rate increases, Nexstar and other broadcast giants often act as a gateway to black out key content from consumers living within any regions they are exclusively licensed to serve, and levy far higher tolls to bring that programming back.

Today's lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, charges America's largest broadcaster Nexstar Media Group with violating federal antitrust law by engaging in an illegal conspiracy with Mission Broadcasting and White Knight Broadcasting to manipulate, raise and fix the prices of so-called retransmission consent fees that DIRECTV must pay to offer ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX local stations. The trio's 27 owned or operated local stations remain blacked out to several hundreds of thousands of DIRECTV, DIRECTV STREAM, and U-verse consumers spanning 25 cities from Albany to Albuquerque and Billings to Baton Rouge beginning Oct. 7, 2022. 

(Note: The lawsuit alleges the conspiracy includes Nexstar and Mission stations in Joplin and Springfield.)

The DIRECTV suit calls out in detail how Nexstar utilizes Mission and White Knight to skirt FCC station ownership caps and other federal laws through collusive retransmission consent negotiations with "sidecar" station groups that it manages. Nexstar owns overlapping stations with White Knight and Mission in every one of the affected markets (see below), and the suit charges both White Knight and Mission allow their respective retransmission consent negotiations to be overseen, administered and subject to the approval of Nexstar in direct violation of applicable laws.

"Mission and White Knight are now unlawfully coordinating with Nexstar to raise prices and extract supracompetitive retransmission consent fees from DIRECTV in 'overlap' DMAs—those markets where both Nexstar and either Mission or White Knight each own a Big-4 station," DIRECTV states. "To accomplish this unlawful and anticompetitive aim, Mission and White Knight have entered into an agreement in which they have effectively relinquished decision-making authority to Nexstar."

Among its several other examples, the suit argues that the trio routinely share confidential rates and other financial information through a single agent who can't keep the details of one contract straight from another, closely align their respective blackout dates, and duplicate their public responses to the media to manipulate viewers and betray the public trust once they unilaterally pull their station signals.

Legal record of this case is available at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.