For fans of the National Football League’s New England Patriots and Tennessee Titans in Marshall County — and football fans in general — it will be of little solace, but the brief battle between DirecTV/AT&T and Hearst Broadcasting Company has come to a conclusion.

The companies announced in a joint statement this week they had come together to a new transmission agreement, after Central Iowans’ access to CBS affiliate KCCI Channel 8 had been blocked for DirecTV customers over the weekend as a consequence. The most notable of the events was the playoff game between the Patriots and Titans on Saturday night. Despite the blackout for DirecTV, the broadcast earned a 17.1 rating and was seen by 31 million people.

“Hearst and AT&T have entered into a new multi-year retransmission consent agreement to provide Hearst-owned local broadcast stations to customers of AT&T’s video platforms across the country,” the statement said.

The agreement ended what was a high-profile back-and-forth between the media giants, with multiple press releases being put out and sharing each company’s side of the story.

“Hearst has refused and instead continues to demand far higher fees than we have ever agreed to with any other station owner including very recent deals with far larger broadcasters,” DirecTV said during the dispute.

Hearst responded by questioning DirecTV’s commitment to making a deal.

“We have made significant investments to deliver top-tier programming to our viewers and DirecTV is seeking the right to carry our stations at below market rates, which is neither fair nor reasonable,” Hearst said.

Details of the agreement between the two sides were not disclosed.

In previous years, AT&T and DirecTV have had disagreements with local broadcast providers such as Nexstar and Sinclair Broadcasting.

In other tech news

* Wednesday night’s college basketball game between Iowa State and Kansas at Hilton Coliseum was the Cyclones’ first basketball broadcast on the ESPN+ streaming platform for a home contest. This is in accordance with a deal ESPN and the Big 12 reached in April 2019. That deal gave ESPN the right to put basketball games on its streaming platform instead of on network television.

Iowa State did not jump to the network in 2019, but made its debut Wednesday and will expand its presence on ESPN+ in the 2020-21 athletic season.

“This enhancement to our rights agreement reflects an ongoing desire to give Big 12 fans access to their favorite teams and hundreds of more contests, while embracing the power of technology and the expanded nature of sports consumption,” said Burke Mangus, ESPN Executive Vice President of Programming and Scheduling.

The agreement does impact bars and restaurants who generally show Iowa State games, as ESPN+ does not yet have distribution agreements with those establishments, according to the Ames Tribune.

ESPN+ has a $4.99 monthly subscription fee.

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Contact Noah Rohlfing at 641-753-6611 or nrohlfing@timesrepublican.com