No ABC on Xfinity: Contract Dispute or Quiet Censorship?

This week, I noticed that ABC and Denver Channel 7 had disappeared from my Xfinity lineup. 

NBC was gone, too, and only two local news stations remained: Fox and CBS, both with a decidedly pro-administration lean.

I wanted to know why. What followed was several hours of my time, three phone calls, and a lesson in how systems are designed to exhaust you into giving up.

The first call to Xfinity lasted an hour. The agent, who identified herself as Lexi and spoke in a voice that sounded more mechanical than human, read me a prepared script about a contract not being renewed. When I asked to speak with a supervisor, she told me I had “missed my opportunity” because we were still talking. I said I would wait. 

She transferred me. The call disconnected.

The second call went directly to E.W. Scripps, the parent company of KMGH, the ABC affiliate in Denver. The agent was more forthcoming. She confirmed a contract dispute with Xfinity but offered no specifics. I asked directly: Was Scripps under any political pressure to block these stations? She said no. 

I stated that I considered this situation a suppression of freedom of speech and thanked her.

Since then, I have learned the full scope of what happened. 

The contract between Comcast and Scripps expired at 5:59 p.m. Eastern Time on March 31, 2026.  By that evening, forty Scripps broadcast stations had gone dark across nineteen markets nationwide, including nineteen major network affiliates carrying ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC programming.

Denver is one of those markets, where Xfinity customers have lost ABC. (In Colorado Springs and where I live, they’ve also lost the local NBC affiliate, which Scripps owns.)

This is a corporate fee dispute, not a targeted political action against Colorado. 

Both sides claim the other is being unreasonable.  Comcast says Scripps rejected fair offers. Scripps says it has been negotiating in good faith and that its stations provide critical local news and public safety coverage that Comcast is undervaluing.

That framing matters. 

But so does this: whatever the cause, the effect in Colorado is that Xfinity customers are left without ABC during one of the most consequential political periods in recent American history. A fee dispute between two corporations is producing an information gap that falls hardest on people who don’t know to look elsewhere.

App workarounds exist; I downloaded them. But most people will not know to do that, and many won’t have the means or the time to figure it out.

 Scripps has said its programming remains available over the air, on station websites, on streaming apps and other providers. That is technically true. It is also an answer that assumes a level of tech literacy and financial flexibility that many viewers simply do not have.

I called KMGH directly as well. Rather than pressing the customer option, I chose the news tipline and left a message identifying my concern: that whether this dispute is political or purely financial, the result is a narrowed information landscape for voters who rely on local broadcast news.

A formal FCC complaint is next. The current FCC under Chair Brendan Carr, a Trump appointee, holds a 3-to-1 Republican majority with two Democratic seats deliberately left vacant. I have no illusions about where that complaint will land. 

But the paper trail matters. The record matters.

I pay $268 a month for my Xfinity bundle: television, internet and related services. For that amount, I am currently receiving a local news lineup of two stations while two others remain inaccessible with no clear timeline for resolution and no proactive outreach to customers on how to find alternatives. That is not a service. That is a filter.

If you are an Xfinity customer affected by this blackout, here is where to direct your concerns:

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