WRTV Back on DirecTV After Two Months; WISH-TV Returns After Seven Years

WRTV returned to DirecTV late last week after a two-month blackout, while sister stations WISH-TV and WNDY-TV will rejoin the satellite lineup within weeks — ending an absence that stretched past seven years for those two channels. Circle City Broadcasting announced the resolution of its long-running retransmission fee dispute with DirecTV, signing a new carriage agreement that reunites all three of its Indianapolis stations on the platform.

The split timeline tells the story. WRTV, the group's ABC affiliate, came off DirecTV roughly two months ago in the latest round of the fee fight. WISH-TV and WNDY-TV have been off the service since 2018, when a previous impasse pulled them and never brought them back. Now one contract covers the trio across what the station group describes as DirecTV's platforms throughout the Indianapolis market.

What did the two sides actually agree?

Neither company disclosed the money. Financial terms stay sealed, which is standard practice in retransmission renewals and usually means both sides would rather not reveal who blinked. What Circle City did say, in its own words, is that the deal "brings WISH-TV, WNDY-TV and WRTV together under a new carriage agreement, giving DirecTV subscribers access to all three Circle City Broadcasting stations" and "expands access to its local television stations throughout Central Indiana."

DuJuan McCoy, Owner, President and CEO of Circle City Broadcasting, framed the deal as a win for two audiences at once. "This agreement is a significant milestone for our viewers and advertising partners," McCoy said. "We are pleased to restore and expand access to all three of our stations across DirecTV's platforms throughout the Indianapolis market."

That mention of advertising partners matters. Local stations live on two revenue streams: retransmission fees from distributors like DirecTV and spot advertising priced against viewership. A seven-year channel blackout in a top-25 market doesn't just cost viewers their local news. It erodes the ratings base that ad sales depend on, and it hands that audience to competing Indianapolis stations still carried on the platform.

Who noticed the gap most?

Satellite subscribers in Central Indiana lost access to local news, weather and syndicated programming tied to the missing channels. A two-month outage is an irritation; a seven-year one is a generational absence — viewers who moved to DirecTV after early 2018 may never have known WISH or WNDY existed on the service. Circle City now expects to close that gap, with WRTV available immediately and the other two stations added back "in a few weeks," according to the group's statement.

The restoration also narrows the gap between DirecTV's lineup and what over-the-air viewers in Indianapolis receive free. For a satellite platform that markets completeness of local channels, carrying three fewer Central Indiana stations than a rooftop antenna delivers was, on some level, a competitive liability.

Retransmission disputes remain the industry's recurring ritual: distributors want to cap per-subscriber fees, station groups want them raised, and viewers pay for the standoff in blacked-out channels. This one ended without public bloodletting.

Barring last-minute hitches, WISH-TV and WNDY-TV should be back on DirecTV screens within weeks, closing out one of the longer station-carriage absences in recent memory.