DirecTV told customers it's hiking prices next month, after ESPN, ABC and other Disney-owned channels went dark in an ongoing contract fight.

The ABC and ESPN blackout on DirecTV — affecting nearly 11 million homes — comes during a busy sports calendar with college football, the NFL and the U.S. Open tennis tournament.

The contract dispute between Disney and DirecTV echoes a similar outage last year on Spectrum TV for ESPN, ABC and related channels. While last year's dispute was mostly about lic

Disney — whose networks have been dark on DirecTV since Sept. 1 amid a carriage dispute — on Friday launched a campaign to alert DirecTV customers that they have “plenty of options” to get ABC, ESPN and others from rival providers.