Gray Media has reached an agreement with the Walt Disney Company that renews its affiliation with ABC on television stations in more than two dozen regional markets, the company announced on Monday.
The deal will keep ABC on Gray Media-owned stations in places like Tampa, Florida; Reno, Nevada; Rapid City, Iowa; Bowling Green, Kentucky and Biloxi, Mississippi through December 31, 2028.
“We are pleased to announce the further extension of our decades-long relationship with Disney for ABC station affiliations,” Pat LaPlatney, the President and co-CEO of Gray Media, said in a statement. “These agreements recognize our ABC affiliates’ commitment to public service and will help them continue to serve their communities.”
“Disney-ABC is incredibly proud of our long-established partnership with Gray to serve 25 outstanding communities across the country,” Susi D’Ambra-Coplan, the Senior Vice President of Affiliate Relations at Disney, said on Monday. “With this new agreement, we couldn’t be more pleased to pair our best-in-class network shows, news and sports with their invaluable local programming for many more years to come.”
The announcement comes about a week after incoming Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr fired off a letter to Bob Iger, the CEO of Disney, accusing the entertainment giant of playing hardball with independent TV station owners regarding their affiliation with ABC.
Carr complained that Disney was trying to engage in a practice called “reverse retrans,” through which the company demanded more fees from local TV station operators on the premise that the stations will make up the difference through higher fees charged to cable and satellite TV distributors. Those fees have been the primary driver behind skyrocketing cable and satellite TV bills over the past decade.
“The [FCC] has long been concerned about the balance of power between networks and affiliates, and has recently noted that the upward trend in reverse compensation is evidence of growing national network power over the local affiliates,” Carr wrote in his letter. “Reported restrictions on negotiating carriage on streaming platforms and provisions that restrict a station’s ability to compete for local sports rights are further evidence of this growing imbalance…it calls into question the extent to which some national programming networks are able to influence station operations, and whether the various terms of network affiliation agreements could unduly inhibit the ability of local broadcast TV stations to make programming decision that best reflect the needs and interest of their communities.”
Carr also noted that Disney has relegated more of its premium entertainment and sports programming to its own streaming services, including Disney Plus and Hulu, despite charging broadcast TV station owners more money for ABC. In some cases, Carr wrote, the amount of money being charged to ABC affiliates was more than 100 percent of what broadcast TV outlets charge to cable and satellite platforms for their signals, he claimed.
Gray didn’t make mention of Carr’s letter in their statement on Monday, nor was it clear if the incoming FCC Chairman’s letter had any influence on getting the deal done. Typically, negotiations over new affiliation agreements are stated months before a contract expires, and the discussions between Gray Media and Disney almost certainly took place before November, when Donald Trump clinched a second non-consecutive term in the White House. (Trump announced his intention to appoint Carr to serve as the FCC’s Chairman in January; Jessica Rosenworcel, the current FCC chair, said she intends to resign from the agency on Inauguration Day.)
Less clear is how other ABC affiliation agreements are shaping up. Sinclair Broadcast Group, one of the largest independent owners of ABC affiliated stations, renewed its agreement with Disney to continue carrying the network two years ago, with that contract in place until the end of 2026. Nexstar Media Group announced in 2017 that it renewed its ABC affiliation deal through 2022; while the company didn’t announce a renewal afterward, it is believed that Nexstar’s current deal also lasts through 2026.
