Cox Media Group, a network of local broadcast TV stations owned by the investment giant Apollo Global Management, is cutting off DirecTV customers ahead of the Super Bowl amid a retransmission consent dispute with the provider.
Consumers are being placed in the crossfire of the war between broadcast channels and providers over retransmission fees, which ballooned from about $215 million in 2006 to $11.7 billion in 2019 according to industry research.
Broadcast TV has been a declining industry for over a decade, but big investment firms like Apollo have proven adept at amalgamating large numbers of stations in order to extract higher fees from cable and satellite providers. These costs are typically passed down to the consumer.
Another way in which consumers are impacted is when blackouts are used ahead of major events in the TV calendar — like the Super Bowl — as a means to secure more favorable deals from satellite and cable providers.
The American Television Alliance, an advocacy group representing several U.S. cable and satellite providers, accused Cox of “price gouging,” saying the company has used the Super Bowl as leverage in previous disputes with Charter Spectrum, Dish Network, Verizon Fios, Cable One and AT&T.
A Cox representative blamed DirectTV for the breakdown in talks.
“It’s disappointing that AT&T/DirecTV has decided to deprive [consumers] of that access. We take pride in serving our communities and we will fight to continue to fulfill this responsibility,” said the Cox spokesman.
Apollo, the company that owns Cox, attracted controversy in 2017 when it worked with former Obama officials to purchase the for-profit University of Phoenix at what critics said was a “fire sale” price, made possible by those same officials lowering capital requirements for the purchase.
More recently, Apollo was embroiled in scandal after it emerged that its co-founder and CEO, Leon Black, had paid over $150 million over five years to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, after Epstein pleaded guilty to a prostitution charge involving a teenage girl in 2008. Following the scandal, Black announced he will step down from his position as CEO of Apollo in July, but will remain chairman of the company.
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. His new book, #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election, which contains exclusive interviews with sources inside Google, Facebook, and other tech companies, is currently available for purchase.
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