Tegna Warning of Possible DirecTV Blackout This Week

Tegna is warning DirecTV and U-Verse subscribers about a possible blackout of local Tegna stations if there's no new retransmission consent agreement. "We hope that DIRECTV is willing to negotiate a market-based deal before the November 30 deadline and doesn’t take away DIRECTV and AT&T U-Verse customers’ local news, weather, sports and network programs," the broadcaster said in a statement sent to us Tuesday. DirecTV emailed that Tegna "has once again made a private negotiation public in the hopes of creating unnecessary and premature concern among some of our customers to extract higher rates for local broadcast stations." DirecTV said it "will ... do our utmost to shield them from unwarranted price hikes as we work with TEGNA to renew its stations without any interruption.” Tegna owns and operates 68 stations in 54 metropolitan regions.