Sunbeam Television, which owns WSVN in Miami and WHDH in Boston, reached a new retrans agreement with DirecTV on Thursday.
The deal ends a weeks-long blackout and guarantees that DirecTV subscribers in Boston will be able to watch the Patriots play in the Super Bowl.
“We are pleased that we reached an agreement with DirecTV, and we appreciate our viewers’ patience during this tough negotiation,” WHDH general manager Chris Wayland said in a statement.
WSVN and WHDH, as well as Boston CW-affiliate WLVI, were pulled off the satellite TV service when the previous carriage agreement between the companies expired on January 13th.
Earlier this week, Senator John Kerry wrote a letter to the presidents of Sunbeam and DirecTV, urging them to prevent a blackout of the Super Bowl.
“To alleviate the anxieties of so many Patriots fans, I strongly urge you both to issue a public statement that your current retransmission consent dispute will not include blacking out the Super Bowl,” Kerry wrote. “If people in Boston miss the Super Bowl this year because of this dispute, I can assure you that it will lead more and more people to throw up their hands and say, ‘a pox upon both of their houses.'”
WHDH now has an all-caps message on its homepage declaring, “We are your Super Bowl station.”