Comcast and the E. W. Scripps Company have reached an agreement that restores Scripps-owned local broadcast stations and national networks to Xfinity TV, The Desk has learned.
The deal was reached early Tuesday morning, with Scripps channels being restored to Xfinity TV’s systems in metropolitan areas like Detroit, San Diego, Tucson and Baltimore, according to people familiar with the matter.
Financial terms were not immediately available, and are unlikely to be disclosed by either company.
“Scripps has reached an agreement with Comcast, and all Scripps stations are back on Xfinity for subscribers today,” a Scripps spokesperson told The Desk by e-mail. “We appreciate our viewers’ patience and look forward to serving them once again on the Xfinity service with local news, weather, live sports and entertainment programming.”
In a separate statement, Comcast said it will continue to provide billing credits to eligible subscribers who lost access to one or more Scripps-owned channels.
“We’re pleased to have reached a new agreement with the E.W. Scripps Company and thank our customers for their understanding during the negotiations,” the Comcast spokesperson said. “We will continue providing credits to eligible customers for the period when the channels were temporarily unavailable.”
Comcast dropped Scripps-owned channels at the beginning of April after a contract to offer the channels to its Xfinity TV subscribers lapsed without a new agreement in place.
A spokesperson for Comcast said its decision was rooted in an effort to ensure its Xfinity TV subscribers pay a fair price for local and national TV programming, with the blackout coming after Scripps turned down “a number of reasonable offers” to keep the channels on its platform.
Scripps owns a number of major network-affiliated local TV stations and national networks like Ion Television, Court TV, Scripps News, Laff and Bounce. A total if 19 major network-affiliated stations and 21 independent outlets were affected by the dispute.
Scripps said local viewers still had access to news programming from its stations via free online streams, which are widely available on platforms like Tubi and Local Now.
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Editor’s note: This article was updated Tuesday afternoon to include a comment from a Comcast spokesperson.
