Another new year, another TV carriage dispute.

About 6 million Spectrum TV subscribers have lost local channels in New York, Los Angeles, Denver, St. Louis and 20 other markets amid a contract standoff between pay-TV provider Charter and the Tribune Media broadcast group.

Tribune's 33 channels went dark Wednesday across Charter's Spectrum TV system, which serves 41 cities. The two companies had only temporarily extended the contract, which expired Monday. In addition to subscribers in Seattle, Denver and St. Louis losing Fox channels – and Indianapolis losing Fox and CBS channels – just as NFL playoffs approach this weekend, more than 14 million subscribers also lost WGN America, Tribune Media says.

“We’ve offered Spectrum fair market rates for our top-rated local news, live sports and high-quality entertainment programming, and similarly fair rates for our cable network, WGN America,” Gary Weitman, Tribune Media’s senior vice president for corporate relations, said in a statement. “Spectrum has refused our offer and failed to negotiate in a meaningful fashion.”

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Tribune is demanding an increase of more than double what Charter currently pays for the broadcaster's stations, Charter said in a statement. "That is more than we pay any other broadcaster. They’re not being reasonable."

Media company Nexstar last month said it would pay $4.1 billion to acquire Tribune Media's 42 stations, giving the Texas-headquartered broadcaster the largest collection of local TV stations with 216 stations, covering nearly half of the U.S. upon completion of the deal.

NFL fans caught up in the dispute can stream games free on the NFL and Yahoo Sports apps.

This is just the latest outage caused by contract disputes between pay-TV providers and broadcasters. More than 1 million Verizon Fios subscribers in Washington, Baltimore, Norfolk, Virginia, and Buffalo, New York, were without channels since Monday until the TV and broadband provider and broadcast group Tegna came to an agreement Thursday.

Verizon on Sunday also settled a dispute with Disney that kept channels such as ESPN and the Disney Channel, as well as ABC stations in New York and Philadelphia, available.

Now going on two months is a dispute between HBO and Dish Network, when began when HBO took its channels from the satellite TV provider and its broadband-delivered TV service Sling TV on Nov. 1.

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Follow USA TODAY reporter Mike Snider on Twitter: @MikeSnider.

