⚡ Industry Alert

Dish Just Blacked Out Your Local TV — Here's Every Station They Pulled and What To Do About It

A contract breakdown between Dish Network and Gray Media has blacked out local stations in 113 markets across 36 states. Here's the complete list of every affected station — and how switching to DIRECTV through EmpireTV fixes it today.

Published March 11, 2026  ·  EmpireTV News Desk

If you're a Dish Network subscriber, your local ABC, CBS, NBC, or Fox station may have gone dark on March 10, 2026. That's the day Dish failed to reach a new carriage agreement with Gray Media — the nation's largest owner of top-rated local TV stations — and pulled all 180 of Gray's stations off its platform overnight.

The dispute centers on what Gray Media calls an "unprecedented" contractual demand from Dish — a provision that has no parallel anywhere in the history of the pay-TV industry. Gray refused. Dish blacked out. Millions of paying subscribers instantly lost their local news, weather, live sports, and primetime programming.

The scope is staggering. Gray operates 54 NBC affiliates, 53 CBS affiliates, 49 CW affiliates, 28 Fox affiliates, and 26 ABC affiliates across the country — reaching roughly 37% of all U.S. TV households. For viewers in smaller markets where Gray owns the only major network affiliate, this means no local news, no severe weather alerts, no live sports. Nothing.

This is not Dish's first offense. In recent years they've blacked out Hearst Television (2023), Cox Media Group (2022), Disney including ABC (2022), and Nexstar (2020) — using customers as pawns each time. Dish's subscriber count has collapsed from 14 million in 2014 to just 5 million today. This latest dispute raises a serious question for anyone still on Dish: is this service still working for you?

DIRECTV vs. Dish — Side by Side

Every Gray Media Station Dropped by Dish

All 180 stations organized by state. Primary network affiliation shown — many stations carry multiple networks on subchannels.

Alabama — 5 Stations

Alaska — 5 Stations

Arizona — 4 Stations

Arkansas — 1 Station

Colorado — 3 Stations

Connecticut — 1 Station

Florida — 5 Stations

Georgia — 8 Stations

Hawaii — 4 Stations

Idaho — 1 Station

Illinois — 3 Stations

Indiana — 3 Stations

Iowa — 4 Stations

Kansas — 5 Stations

Kentucky — 4 Stations

Louisiana — 6 Stations

Maine — 2 Stations

Massachusetts — 2 Stations

Michigan — 3 Stations

Minnesota — 4 Stations

Mississippi — 5 Stations

Missouri — 5 Stations

Nebraska — 5 Stations

Nevada — 2 Stations

New York — 2 Stations

North Carolina — 4 Stations

North Dakota — 4 Stations

Ohio — 3 Stations

Oregon — 1 Station

South Carolina — 4 Stations

South Dakota — 6 Stations

Tennessee — 3 Stations

Texas — 10 Stations

Vermont — 1 Station

Virginia — 4 Stations

West Virginia — 4 Stations

Wisconsin — 4 Stations

Wyoming — 1 Station