DirecTV subscribers in Central Oregon lost local NBC affiliate KTVZ and Fox affiliate KFXO from their lineup, just as the National Football League enters a second weekend of playoff games.

The outage began at 3 p.m. Thursday, when the last contract extension between station owner News-Press & Gazette and DirecTV expired, said Ian Guthrie, manager of distribution for NPG, a media company in St. Joseph, Missouri. The outage also affects NPG-owned stations in California, Colorado, Missouri, Idaho and Arizona, he said.

Although the local stations are available over the airwaves, DirecTV, other satellite and cable companies pay fees to the station owners for the right to include local broadcast stations in their systems’ channel lineups. Because DirecTV and NPG could not agree to terms of a new three-year contract, DirecTV lost the right to distribute NPG’s stations.

The American Television Alliance, a group of cable, satellite and phone companies, said broadcasters are threatening outages at an increasing rate; the alliance issued a press release Friday saying 2,500 bars and restaurants in NPG service areas will be affected by the outage.

Guthrie said this is NPG’s first outage in three years, and the last also involved DirecTV, which is now owned by AT&T.

Both sides in the NPG-DirecTV dispute said they’ll continue talks.

“Once we have NPG’s permission, we can have the game and any other affected programming back into our customers’ lineups within moments,” DirecTV spokesman Leland Kim said.

In the meantime, DirecTV subscribers who want to watch KTVZ, which is channel 21, or KFXO, channel 39, can tune in over the airwaves.

Kim said subscribers should turn off their DirecTV receivers before tuning their digital TVs to pick up the broadcast signals.

In addition, Kim said Fox Sports typically streams its NFL playoff coverage live at FoxSportsGo.com and via the FoxSportsGo app. NBC Sports does the same with its NFL coverage at nbcsports.com and the NBC Sports app, he said.

— Reporter: 541-617-7860, 
kmclaughlin@bendbulletin.com