Tegna and Mediacom announced Sunday, hours before the Super Bowl, that they have resolved a 13-month retransmission consent dispute.
The outage began Jan. 1, 2021, and had included NBC affiliate KARE/11 (Minneapolis), ABC affiliates WOI/5 (Ames-Des Moines) and WQAD/8 (Moline-Quad Cities), CW affiliate KCWI/23 (Ames-Des Moines), and various subchannels.
Mediacom is the predominant cable operator in Iowa. Its Minnesota presence is smaller but it does run cable systems in some parts of the Minneapolis market, including the southwestern suburb of Chanhassen.
A Tegna news release posted on KARE’s website notes that the agreement means Mediacom viewers who live in KARE’s market will be able to see the Super Bowl and the last week of the Winter Olympics, both of which are airing on NBC.
In total, the outage had affected a dozen markets nationwide where Tegna and Mediacom overlap, only three of which have a Tegna NBC affiliate (Minneapolis, St. Louis, and Phoenix).
The agreement comes just a week after Tegna and DISH patched up a months-long dispute.