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In a surprise development, YES Network and Comcast on Monday night reached a new carriage agreement, coming to terms on a deal just hours before the regional sports network was set to go dark in Xfinity households across northern New Jersey, the lower Hudson Valley and parts of Connecticut and Pennsylvania.
An informal extension in the YES-Comcast carriage feud was set to expire at 11:59 p.m. ET, which would have led to the RSN being yanked in short order. As YES CEO Jon Litner informed viewers of Sunday’s Brewers-Yankees game, Comcast had informed network brass that “they will drop the YES Network from their programming lineup Monday night at midnight.”
The last-minute deal was announced in a joint statement issued late Monday night.
Terms of the renewal were not disclosed, but it is believed that YES will remain on Comcast’s Expanded Basic tier, which has been the RSN’s home base since it launched in 2002. As has been the case with other RSNs such as NESN and its own NBC Sports Bay Area and NBC Sports California, Comcast had planned to shift to YES to a $69.99 digital tier—a move that would have cost Yankees and Nets fans an additional $20 per month.
More to the point, the promotion would have led to a steep decline in YES Network’s reach. According to a formal program carriage complaint filed with the FCC Sunday by YES general counsel Derek Heuzey, Comcast’s digital tier “reaches approximately 30% fewer subscribers” than the cheaper offering.
The legacy carriage deal expired on Sept. 30, 2024, but Comcast and YES continued to negotiate throughout the winter under the umbrella of a series of unofficial extensions.
RSN blackouts have become increasingly common as the cable bundle continues to shrink, and of late a handful of carriage standoffs have led to permanent exile. Dish Network hasn’t carried an RSN since it parted ways with MASN and the NBC Sports RSNs in April 2021, while the MSG Networks vanished from Comcast’s lineup six months later.
While the FCC did not issue a response to the YES complaint, chairman Brendan Carr had indicated that he was monitoring the situation. Carr took to social media on Sunday afternoon in an attempt to light a fire under the two combatants, posting the message, “I would encourage a quick and favorable resolution for the benefit of everyone” to his X account under a screen grab of a New York Post headline related to the matter. Carr went on to note that the commission “does have authority to step in and address claims of discriminatory conduct,” although he did not elaborate further.
While it’s unclear if the formal petition to the FCC played a role in Monday night’s breakthrough, a recent carriage scrap between Disney and DirecTV was resolved exactly one week after the satellite-TV provider filed a good-faith negotiation complaint with the commission.
YES partners with Sportico on a monthly sports-business program that is carried by the RSN.
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