Last year, on the first Monday of the NFL regular season, Disney and Charter Communications resolved their differences. This year, the fight between Disney and DirecTV has shown no sign of subsiding.
Via the Associated Press, DirecTV has filed a complaint with the FCC against Disney. It accuses the company of negotiating bad faith.
Specifically, DirecTV claims that Disney is “violating the FCC’s good faith mandates by asking it to waive any legal claims on any anticompetitive actions.”
Unless a deal is reached soon, the Monday Night Football opener between the Jets and 49ers will be blacked out out for most of the 11 million DirecTV subscribers.
The game will be carried by ESPN and by ABC. The DirecTV outage applies to the ABC affiliates owned directly by Disney. That’s the case in New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Philadelphia, and San Francisco.
In many locations, a set of rabbit ears should be able to pick up a local ABC affiliate. For millions, that might be the only way to watch tonight’s game.