Millions of YouTube TV subscribers could miss “Monday Night Football” on ESPN and ABC News’ election day coverage as the blackout of Walt Disney-owned channels stretches into a second week.
“Monday Night Football” features the Dallas Cowboys battling the Arizona Cardinals. In addition, several important political contests are on Tuesday ballots, including the New York City mayor’s election, gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey, and California’s Prop. 50 to decide whether officials can redraw the state’s congressional map to favor Democrats.
Disney on Monday sought a temporary thaw in tensions with Google Inc. after the two sides failed last week to strike a new distribution contract covering Disney’s television channels on Google’s YouTube TV.
“Despite the impasse that led to the current blackout, we have asked YouTube TV to restore ABC for Election Day so subscribers have access to the information they rely on,” a Disney spokesperson said in a statement Monday. “We believe in putting the public interest first and hope YouTube TV will take this small step for their customers while we continue to work toward a fair agreement.”
A Google spokesperson was not immediately available for a comment.
ABC’s “World News Tonight With David Muir” is one of television’s highest rated programs.
More than 10 million YouTube TV customers lost access to ESPN, ABC and other Disney channels late Thursday after a collapse in negotiations over distribution fees for Disney channels, causing one of the largest recent blackouts in the television industry.
The two TV giants wrangled for weeks over how much Google must pay to carry Disney’s channels, including FX, Disney Jr. and National Geographic. YouTube TV — now one of the largest pay-TV services in the U.S. — has balked at Disney’s price demands, leading to the outage.
YouTube TV does not have the legal right to distribute Disney’s networks after its last distribution agreement expired.
“We know this is a frustrating and disappointing outcome for our subscribers,” a YouTube spokesperson said in a statement last week. “We continue to urge Disney to work with us constructively to reach a fair agreement that restores their networks to YouTube TV.”
YouTube has said that should the outage stretch for “an extended period,” it would offer its subscribers a $20 credit.
Spanish-language TelevisaUnivision-owned channels were knocked off YouTube TV in a separate dispute that has lasted more than a month. Televisa has appealed to high-level political officials, including President Trump and Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr.
Last year, after Disney-owned channels went dark on DirecTV in a separate carriage fee dispute, Disney offered to make available to DirecTV subscribers its ABC coverage of the sole presidential debate between President Trump and then-Vice President Kamala Harris.
DirecTV viewed ABC’s offer as something of a stunt, noting the debate would be streamed. DirecTV countered by asking Disney to instead make all of its channels available.
That fee dispute resulted in a 13-day blackout on DirecTV, one that was resolved a few days later.
Heightened tensions in the television industry have led to numerous blackouts.
In 2023, Disney and Charter Communications were unable to iron out a new contract by their deadline, resulting in a 10-day blackout of Disney channels on Charter’s Spectrum service. A decade earlier, Time Warner Cable subscribers went nearly a month without CBS-owned channels.
Programming companies, including Disney, have asked for higher fees for their channels to help offset the increased cost of sports programming, including NFL and NBA contracts. But pay-TV providers, including YouTube have pushed back, attempting to draw a line to slow their customers’ ever-increasing monthly bills.
More than 40 million pay-TV customer homes have cut the cord over the last decade, according to industry data. Many have switched to smaller streaming packages. YouTube TV also benefited by attracting disaffected customers from DirecTV, Charter Spectrum and Comcast. YouTube TV is now the nation’s third-largest TV channel distributor.
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