Fans Breathe Sigh of Relief: DirecTV to Air Super Bowl

DirecTV customers and New England Patriots fans can sit back and watch the Super Bowl in their own living room now that the company reached an agreement with Sunbeam.

With this weekend's AFC win by the New England Patriots,  and urged the two companies to come to terms before the Super Bowl would be blacked out in Boston and Florida.

The dispute left about 200,000 DirecTV subscribers in the Boston TV market without access to NBC and the CW network programming, according to Boston.com. WHDH, the NBC affiliate in Boston, will broadcast the Super Bowl, so without an agreement, those people would not have been able to see the game.

"We are pleased to have reached an agreement to end the Sunbeam blackout, and regret that any of our customers were forced into the middle of a business dispute where they should never have been in the first place," DirecTV officials posted on their website. "We believe, like many, the public interest is best served by allowing customers to keep their local broadcast stations as we negotiate future agreements, rather than being denied access by broadcast stations and used as leverage in what should be a private business matter."

DirecTV had reported that Sunbeam had been asking for a 300 percent increase in retransmission fees, and during the negotiations local channels 7 and 56 were removed from the Directv lineup.

As of the agreement tonight, both channels have been restored.

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