A DirecTV carriage dispute with 12 stations owned by Cox Media Group broke out early in February, and that had the potential to be a major pain for those trying to watch Super Bowl LVIII in the Seattle, WA and Dayton, OH areas. Those were the two areas where a CBS affiliate owned by Cox Media Group (majority owned by Apollo Global, minority owned by Cox Enterprises) was affected.
While DirecTV, U-verse, and DirecTV stream subscribers in those areas would still have been able to access the Super Bowl in other ways (including the Nickelodeon alternate broadcast and the Univision Spanish feed), or by other means of accessing CBS (Paramount+ or an antenna), this dispute marked a significant pain point at the very least for many. And with DirecTV also vowing to carry this Super Bowl in 4K (unlike Paramount+), the quality of the feed these subscribers got would have been worse without a deal.
But just hours ahead of Super Bowl LVIII’s kickoff at 6:30 p.m. Eastern Sunday, the sides announced they’ve come to turns for DirecTV to again carry all 12 of these stations, including the Seattle and Dayton CBS affiliates. And this is a new multi-year agreement, so there shouldn’t be an issue here for some time. As with many carriage disputes , this was fixed right before a big event.