Nexstar and Optimum Reach Carriage Deal to Restore 63 Channels to Altice Customers

Nextstar and Optimum have reached a carriage deal that will restore programming to Altice customers in the United States, the companies announced Saturday. The deal comes days after NewsNation and network and local programming provided by 63 of Nexstar Media Group’s television stations in 42 markets went dark.

“Nexstar Media Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: NXST) and Altice USA (NYSE: ATUS) today announced that they have reached a comprehensive partnership agreement and all Nexstar programming has been restored to Altice USA’s Optimum TV customers,” the companies announced in a statement.

“Together, Nexstar and Optimum thank our customers and viewers for their patience as we partnered on the best deal for them.” Details of the agreement have not been made public.

On Jan. 10 Nexstar insisted it has tried to negotiate with Altice since October and accused the latter of having “repeatedly demand[ed] special terms that are wildly out of step with both our longstanding relationship and the cable television marketplace.”

The resulting back and forth meant two million people in the United States were “deprived” of their programming, Nexstar also said.

“Altice has consistently made unreasonable and unprecedented demands of Nexstar, culminating with their decision to walk away from the negotiations,” said Nexstar’s President and Chief Operating Officer Michael Biard said in a statement. “Unfortunately, this seems to be a regular pattern of behavior for Altice, which dropped the MSG Network just last week, depriving millions of New York sports fans the opportunity to see their favorite teams in action. We understand the difficulty of Altice’s financial situation, burdened as it is by billions in debt, but the solution isn’t to force Optimum subscribers to continually pay more while getting less.”

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