Cox Media Group (CMG) today sent a cease-and-desist letter demanding DISH retract its numerous false claims designed to mislead customers about DISH’s decision to black-out CMG’s local television stations. The letter highlights CMG’s repeated requests and express authorization for DISH to continue carriage of its popular local stations, which DISH ignored before pulling the stations off the air.

“That fact is, we asked DISH for an extension of our prior contract both in writing and verbally on several different occasions. CMG is now publicly asking DISH yet again to put our market-leading stations back on their satellite platform under the agreement that we both have operated under for years, and we’re again inviting them to finally start engaging in a meaningful good-faith negotiation of a new contract,” said Daniel York, President & CEO of CMG.

On November 28, DISH recklessly pulled the plug on 12 popular CMG stations, intentionally denying its customers access to the local news they need and the programming they love. DISH then immediately issued an inaccurate press release that included “knowingly false statements” about its decision to pull the CMG local broadcast stations from its own customers. These statements were “designed to mislead viewers and thereby harm the reputation of CMG in the marketplace,” according to the attorneys’ letter.

For example, DISH intentionally misleads its customers by falsely claiming that CMG “refused to allow you to view their channels while we continue to negotiate.” In fact, CMG offered numerous extensions of the prior contract to allow DISH subscribers to watch CMG’s channels while the parties continued to negotiate. It is DISH who never asked for an extension to continue carrying CMG’s stations and who unilaterally pulled the plug despite CMG expressly authorizing DISH to continue carrying the channels under the prior contract. Indeed, DISH pulled the plug and hit send on a press release that was riddled with falsehoods before the contract even expired. This is typical DISH: callously sacrificing their own customers through frequent blackouts of local news channels.