Dish Satellite TV Subscribers May Lose Bangor’s Channel 2 Tonight

Planning on watching NewsCenter Maine tonight at 11?  Well, you may not be able to.

Once again, another television provider is playing hardball with your local channels, and this time it's the Dish Network. Apparently, Tegna, the big media company that owns WLBZ here in Bangor, has been in negotiations with Dish Network and it looks as though things aren't going very well as the provider has given the folks at Channel 2 the ultimatum, "pay up or you're off the service."

The deadline is 9 o'clock tonight.

We can't find anything about the situation on the Dish Network's website, but the Newscenter site directs Dish subscribers to click a link that takes them to a Tegna site that tells us that "Dish may drop your station if a deal isn't reached by October 6th."

The Newscenter site gives us this information as well, "We are negotiating with DISH but unfortunately, thus far, DISH has refused to reach a fair, market-based agreement to keep our station on their service. Unfortunately, DISH drops more channels than any pay-TV company in the country, forcing you to pay the price for their refusal to negotiate fair deals."

In the past, eastern Maine pay television subscribers have encountered situations like this not only with Dish Network, but also with DirecTV and Spectrum.  Channels have been lost for weeks at a time, but it always seems to work out in the long run.

Besides Newscenter, WLBZ TV 2 airs Sunday Night Football, The Voice, and Saturday Night Live.  NBC shows are also available on the Peacock streaming service.