Peter Sarro, owner of JJ’s Sports Bar and Grille in Northboro, isn’t a gambler.
A DirecTV customer, he said he isn’t banking on the possibility his satellite television provider and Florida-based Sunbeam Television Corp. will resolve their stalemate in time to air the Super Bowl on Channel 7.
The New England Patriots and New York Giants will play Feb. 5, a rematch of the big game from four years ago.
Sunbeam owns WHDH Boston’s Channel 7, and Channel 56, which is WLVI, a CW affiliate.
On Jan. 14, Sunbeam ceased transmitting to those two stations, plus a Fox station in Miami that Sunbeam also owns, to DirecTV customers.
DirecTV spokesman Tom Tyrer said the heart of the dispute is Sunbeam wanting a 300 percent increase in its retransmission consent fee.
A Sunbeam spokesman did not return a phone message yesterday.
Because of the dispute, two NFL playoff games — the NFC wildcard and divisional rounds — were blacked out to Miami customers on Fox, Mr. Tyrer said.
Last Friday Sunbeam relented temporarily, lifting the blackout in Miami for Sunday’s NFC Championship game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Giants.
Mr. Tyrer said the fact that the blackout was temporarily lifted in Miami was promising for Massachusetts customers.
“Given the fact that Sunbeam already returned the NFC Championship to football fans in Miami, we can’t for a second believe that they would deprive Boston fans of seeing the Super Bowl, and especially with the Patriots representing the AFC,” he said.
Mr. Sarro said he couldn’t take the risk.
“I’m a busy sports bar. I can’t be without the Super Bowl, obviously. So I’m making arrangements right now to get (cable provider) Charter in here and hook up boxes. I can’t roll the dice and hope that we have it. I’ve got to be proactive.”
That will be a large job.
Mr. Sarro’s bar and grille has 19 DirecTV boxes, some of them feeding two or three televisions. He also has a 137-inch projection TV that will show the game.
Fellow DirecTV customer Sean McInerney, who owns the Banner Bar and Grille in Worcester, said his only hope was a resolution between DirecTV and Sunbeam.
Mr. McInerney said his bar lost power during the first 12 minutes of the Patriots’ win over Baltimore in the AFC Championship Game on Sunday. The power loss was caused by a manhole fire on Grafton Street.
“All our loyal customers stayed and power came back on in the first quarter,” he said.
But losing the Super Bowl, for any reason, would be a staggering blow.
“If we didn’t have the Super Bowl, especially with the Patriots, that would be a tough one to swallow,” he said.
Katrina Zimkiewicz, manager of Uno Chicago Grill in Sturbridge, said she was not authorized to speak on behalf of her company. But with DirecTV also in her home, she called the dispute “pretty ridiculous” and sure to upset customers of the satellite television provider.
“I’m working, so I really wasn’t going to sit and watch anyway,” she said of the Super Bowl. “But I can see that a lot of customers are going to be disgruntled. Not very good PR for DirecTV or whomever, really.”
Ms. Zimkiewicz said she sympathized with small businesses.
“I feel bad for more mom-and-pop places that use DirecTV, where they’re expecting good business doing wing deals and whatever else,” she said. “I can see that really affecting them if this doesn’t get cleared up in time for the Super Bowl.”
She said she’s reached the point to likely pulling the plug on DirecTV after two years.
“I grew up with cable,” she said. “There are certain parts of satellite that are a bummer. You get a storm, especially with this past summer, and the end of 2011 was pretty rough. Frankly, I think I’ll probably go back to cable just because this might be the breaking point.”
The DirecTV spokesman said retransmission fee issue isn’t new to DirecTV; in 2011, the company quietly conducted 70 of these agreements, with more than 20 in the last four to six weeks.
In more than 10 years, only four disputes, including this one, have occurred, he said.
U.S. Sen. John F. Kerry, D-Mass., has written to Julius Genachowski, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, asking the FCC to urge DirecTV and Sunbeam to come to terms and restore service for Massachusetts customers.
Mr. Kerry, chairman of the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet, said he is not taking sides in the dispute. “But I am siding with the families and small-business owners who count on the television programming they pay to receive to be there when they most need it,” he said.
DirecTV has 19.8 million customers nationwide.
Mr. Kerry said about 200,000 DirecTV customers live in the Greater Boston area, but the company would not verify that statistic.
“I want every bar owner and family in our region with a subscription to DirecTV to know that they will not become collateral damage in a dispute leveraged up against the most important game of the NFL season,” Mr. Kerry said.
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