DirecTV Gets ABC HD, Inks Carriage Deals

[Gregg Lengling]

DirecTV added to its high def portfolio, announcing a deal with Disney and ABC that will give the company access to a HD feed of the ABC network.

The HD deal, part of a bigger carriage agreement with Disney ABC, will allow DirecTV to offer national ABC HD feeds to eligible customers in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Houston, Raleigh, N.C., Fresno, Calif., Flint, Mich., and Toledo, Ohio. Initially, customers in the Pacific and Mountain time zones will receive West Coast feeds and those in the Central and Eastern times zones will receive East Coast feeds, that's until local HD feeds are available in each of the markets, DirecTV said.

The stations that are part of the HD deal are WABC in New York and KABC in Los Angeles. Customers who subscribe to the DirecTV local channels package in ABC's owned television station markets will receive the programming free of charge, DirecTV said.

DirecTV also confirmed that it won a carriage agreement with ESPN as well as Fox Sports Net, but it wouldn't provide specifics on the deals. CableFAX Daily reported that the ESPN deal covers 10 years.