Optimum Announces Update on Carriage Negotiations With Nexstar; Offers Customers Solutions to Keep Watching Their Local Broadcast Stations

Optimum Customers Can Visit Optimum.com/Nexstar for Details

Despite Optimum’s best efforts to reach a fair and reasonable agreement with Nexstar, the owners of multiple broadcast stations, their content has been removed from Optimum TV lineups, effective 5:00PM ET today.

Optimum offered an extension to keep Nexstar’s content on the air while we continued to negotiate to reach a fair deal for our customers, but Nexstar refused.

Optimum issues the following statement on its carriage negotiations with Nexstar and customer-friendly options available to Optimum customers:

“Unfortunately, Nexstar is using an anti-consumer negotiation tactic – tying local channels to less popular ones – requiring Optimum and its customers to pay for channels like NewsNation, which has essentially no viewership, in order to continue carrying Nexstar broadcast stations in various markets across the country.

To illustrate the absurdity of this demand, we note that in any given month, 90% of customers – more than 1.2 million – never tune in to NewsNation, making it unfair to force customers to pay tens of millions of dollars for content they never watch and hold them hostage to force carriage of broadcast stations. Despite NewsNation’s shockingly low viewership, Nexstar has taken this one step further by demanding expanded distribution of the channel to hundreds of thousands more customers, requiring that even more customers who don’t watch it are made to pay for it.

Plus, Nexstar is demanding exorbitant rates, the highest of any broadcasting group.

Nexstar’s "all or nothing" approach of price gouging customers by forcing them to pay for content they don’t want and bundling different stations and channels together into the same negotiations – despite their varied programming and audiences across different states – is in no one’s best interest but their own.

Optimum values local programming and understands that viewers in New York do not watch the same content or have the same interests as viewers in Texas, Arkansas, or California, so it is unreasonable, anti-local, detrimental to customers, and unfair for Nexstar to demand unrelated and contrasting content carriage.

We remain open to continued negotiations with Nexstar to reach a fair new deal to restore their programming on Optimum TV lineups. In the meantime, customers who are looking to watch Nexstar-owned content can continue to do so for free over the air with an antenna or visit www.optimum.com/nexstar to learn more about the solutions Optimum is making available.”

Steps for Customers to Take:

• Customers can rest assured – Optimum has video solutions so that customers can continue watching ABC, NBC, FOX, CBS and/or the CW. Chat with us or go to www.optimum.com/nexstar to learn more.

• Consumer viewing habits have changed dramatically over the last few years and gone are the days of one-size-fits-all content packages, so Optimum is tailoring its offerings to meet customer needs individually. Optimum brings consumers a wide range of options that provide choice, flexibility and value.

• Optimum teams are ready to help customers find the best packages for them. Call us at 866-347-4784, chat with us or visit www.optimum.com/nexstar to learn more.

About Optimum

Optimum is a brand of Altice USA, one of the largest broadband communications and video services providers in the United States, delivering broadband, video, mobile, proprietary content and advertising services to approximately 4.6 million residential and business customers across 21 states. The company operates Optimum Media, an advanced advertising and data business, which provides audience-based, multiscreen advertising solutions to local, regional and national businesses and advertising clients. Altice USA also offers hyper-local and international news through its News 12 networks.

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