We ran through the KAYU-DirecTV blackout drill back in late 2010 and we pretty much got tired of it within a week.

Today's SR story is another summer rerun, a rehashing of many of the same issues that kept the sides from agreeing back 20 months ago.

Basically: national satellite provider DirecTV is complaining that Northwest Broadcasting (the parent of KAYU and some other Washington stations) is bullying it into an excessive fee for carrying its signal and programs.

NW Broadcasting is saying DirecTV has failed to come to the table in good faith, saying the two sides agreed on a carrying fee but then California-based DirecTV added other provisions that scotched the deal.

Both sides say they want to settle it, and help customers regain access to the KAYU Fox Network programs.

Back on 2011 when this last occurred, we went out and gathered up numbers from MediaBiz to see how the three main non-broadcast providers were doing in Spokane's DMA (dominant market area), in number of subscribers. Here was the number that was tallied back in 2010:

Dish: 102,000;  Comcast: 100,000; DirecTV: 69,000.

We doubt that the general proportion of subscribers has changed much since then.

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