Sling TV, the DISH-owned streaming service, is set to expand its local channel lineup by adding ABC affiliates in 8 markets.
The ABC affiliate stations are WLS in Chicago, KFSN in Fresno, Calif., KTRK in Houston, Texas, KABC in Los Angeles, WABC in New York, WPVI in Philadelphia, WTVD in Raleigh-Durham, and KGO in the San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose market.
For at least five markets that already carry local NBC and FOX stations, customers who subscribe to Sling Blue or Sling Orange and Blue will see a $5 per month increase to their bill. Those markets include Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia and San Francisco.
Pricing will stay the same for the rest of the country, Gary Schanman, group president of Sling TV, said in a statement Monday morning.
“For many years, Sling has been able to absorb the increasing costs of these local broadcast channels,” Schanman said. “To carry ABC, FOX and NBC, we need to ensure our pricing includes some of the cost of delivering these services.”
Sling TV has been without local ABC stations since July 2018.
It is not clear when Dish struck a deal to add ABC stations to Sling TV.
The company has been in talks with ABC’s owner, The Walt Disney Company, about another carriage agreement since October 2022.
Dish and Disney resolved a carriage dispute over the terms of carrying ESPN and other networks in early October.
The “handshake agreement” happened just before the start of “Monday Night Football.” It ended a two-day channel blackout of Disney-owned networks for Dish and Sling TV subscribers.
When the agreement was announced, there was no mention of adding ABC affiliates to Sling TV. But Disney acknowledged at the time that it would continue working with Dish to finalize a new deal.
Sling TV already carries a limited number of FOX and NBC stations in its Sling Blue channel bundle.
The live TV streaming service carries local FOX affiliates in 18 markets across the U.S. including Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington D.C.
Local NBC stations are available in 11 markets, including Boston, New York and Los Angeles.
As of Sunday afternoon, Sling TV has listed the Designated Market Areas or DMAs for the local ABC stations on a help page.
The ABC affiliates are expected to be added to Sling TV’s channel lineup on March 1, 2023, according to Sling TV.
This isn’t the first time that Sling TV has carried ABC.
Back in 2016, Sling TV had added 10 ABC affiliates as part of its now-defunct “Broadcast Extra” add-on. The Broadcast Extra bundle was dissolved in July 2018 during a licensing dispute with Univision.
Sling TV reported in a January 17 SEC filing that it now has 2.33 million subscribers in the U.S. at the end of 2022. The live TV streaming service had 2.41 million subscribers the previous quarter.
Note: This story was published on January 29, 2023, and has been updated. Sling TV said on Monday the company will add local ABC stations in 8 markets, not five. A $5 per month price increase will happen in five markets.
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