The Missouri-based owner of Bend television stations KTVZ and KFXO is negotiating down to the wire a new agreement with satellite-TV provider Dish, the station general manager said Friday.

The agreement for Dish to carry the signals from those stations expires 7 p.m. Tuesday, said General Manager Bob Singer.

News-Press and Gazette Co., of St. Joseph, Missouri, owns the Bend stations. KTVZ carries NBC and CW network programming; KFXO carries the Fox and Telemundo networks, according to the company website.

The negotiations affect only local viewers that get those stations via Dish TV; cable and DirecTV subscribers and over-the-air viewers would not be affected, Singer said. He could not say exactly how many local viewers the stations reach through Dish but estimated it at more than 10,000. Deschutes County is considered the stations’ primary market, he said.

“We know this affects the Dish subscribers that are local news fans, and we know how important local news is to our community,” Singer said. “Our hope is that this is resolved very quickly.”

At issue: News-Press and Gazette wants Dish to re-transmit its broadcast in high definition rather than in lower-cost standard definition as it does now, Singer said. The fees paid to Dish to retransmit the stations programming over satellite are also under negotiation, he said.

“These retransmission negotiations are happening every day throughout the country in nearly every TV market,” Singer said. “Our negotiations are in good faith. It’s a private negotiation, and both parties are actively communicating to resolve this by the deadline.”

Dish spokeswoman Courtney Culpepper said the company, based in Englewood, Colorado, is “actively working to finalize a deal before the contract expires.”

In an email Friday, she wrote that Dish is “unsure why News-Press and Gazette decided to involve customers in the contract negotiation process at a point when there is still time for the two parties to reach a mutually beneficial deal.”

KFXO notified viewers starting Thursday with a message crawl across TV screens that the deadline is approaching. The message provided a phone number for Dish customer service and asked viewers to contact the company if they wished to keep the channel on their Dish lineups.

Singer said common sense dictates letting viewers know the channel may disappear.

“In (Dish’s) opinion, they may have felt (the message) was premature,” Singer said, “but that’s what all broadcasters do at some point in the negotiations. It’s very common.”

— Reporter: 541-617-7815, jditzler@bendbulletin.com