I read with some sadness but not much surprise that millions of American viewers have suddenly been cut off from almost 160 TV stations around the country this week. The reason? Nexstar, the largest owner of television outlets in the U.S., has gotten into another dispute with a cable company. This time, it's DirecTV, which complains Nexstar is trying to bully it into accepting a huge hike to carry their channels, and has been forced to pull them from their line-up. 

Even in a time of cord-cutting, that leaves untold subscribers without access to NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox and the CW, depending on the markets they're in. And there's no guarantee when they'll be back. Not only do they lose access to the networks involved, but their local news, as well. 

Nexstar stations dropped from DirecTV in nationwide blackout

This all stems from a law that I first heard about decades ago when I had my 10' C-Band satellite dish. American TV station owners were complaining bitterly that their signals were being taken for free and used to sell cable to customers willing to pay for good reception. That led to the passage of a bill that allowed each group owner to negotiate a "fee for carriage" for a certain time period.

What the lawmakers never envisioned (but should have) is that those owners would continue to escalate those fees until they went up so high, cable and sat providers would be forced to endlessly raise their own subscriber rates to pay for it, costing them subscribers who simply couldn't afford it anymore. 

As millions of Direct customers down south wake up on Monday to find their favourite network affiliates gone, I began to wonder how this works in Canada. Two of Nexstar's biggest stations - WPIX New York and KTLA Los Angeles - are available on cable here, usually for an extra fee. The law on this side of the border doesn't allow Nexstar to up the ante for these stations, but how do they get compensated for them? 

Do the Rogers and Bells of the world simply acquiesce to their demands and raise your bill or are there limits to how much they can charge in Canada? How does it work that these two stations are carried here and what kind of payment arrangement do they have? 

Whatever it is, it's one of the few times you'll hear me say that our system is much, much better in this respect than the one down south. We may pay more, but at least we do it uninterrupted.