DirecTV paid more than $10 million to Nexstar for a station that Nexstar knew would be transitioning to an independent station. Nexstar even continued to collect transmission fees after the station became independent, according to a ruling by a New York appeals court.
The ruling, which Nexstar was attempting to appeal, revolved around the Maryland local station, WHAG. While the station was operating as an NBC affiliate in early 2016, it had lost its NBC affiliation and switched to independent by July of the same year.
The court ruled Nexstar had been told by NBC that the station would not renew its affiliation. In spite of this information, Nexstar continued to negotiate with DirecTV over fees for the channel. Even after the station did switch to independent, one year into the agreement, Nexstar failed to inform DirecTV of the change and continued to collect fees as if it was still an NBC affiliate.
When DirecTV did eventually find out, Nexstar refused to refund the fees paid for the channel while it was an independent station. As part of the lawsuit, both DirecTV and Nexstar agreed that DirecTV doesn’t typically pay fees for independent stations.
Following evidence from two NBC employees that there were no plans to extend WHAG’s NBC affiliation, and there were no suggestions that stance would change, the court ruled Nexstar had “intentionally concealed this information” from DirecTV. The court referred to Nexstar’s argument that it expected to renew its NBC affiliation agreement as “unproven, self-serving contentions.”
All in all, the court upheld the original ruling, agreeing DirecTV had paid in the region of $10.5 million in unnecessary fees for the independent station.
Start the conversation