After nearly two weeks, Disney’s linear channels will finally return to YouTube TV, after the entertainment giant and tech giant reached a new distribution deal.
“This new agreement reflects our continued commitment to delivering exceptional entertainment and evolving with the way audiences choose to watch,” Disney Entertainment co-chairmen Alan Bergman and Dana Walden, along with ESPN Chairman Jimmy Pitaro, said in a statement. “It recognizes the tremendous value of Disney programming and provides YouTube TV subscribers with more flexibility and choice. We are pleased that our networks have been restored in time for fans to enjoy the many exciting programming options this weekend, including college football.
“We are pleased to announce that we have reached an agreement with Disney that preserves the value of our service for our subscribers and the future flexibility of our offerings,” a YouTube spokesperson said Friday evening. “Subscribers should see channels including ABC, ESPN and FX return to their service throughout the day, along with any recordings that were previously in their library. We apologize for the disruption and appreciate our subscribers’ patience while we negotiate on their behalf.”
Disney Channels, which include ABC, ESPN, Freeform and FX, were pulled on Oct. 30 after the two sides were unable to reach an agreement in time for their deal to expire. The resulting blackout was the longest in recent memory for Disney, which found itself in a similarly public dispute with Charter Communications in 2023, although that blackout only lasted 11 days.
According to Disney, the deal will allow select live and library programming from the ESPN Unlimited streaming service to be available on YouTube TV, with ESPN Unlimited made available to YouTube TV subscribers at no additional cost. YouTube will also be able to offer the Disney+ and Hulu package to its users, with YouTube TV benefiting from an option for genre-based channel bundles in the future.
In most cases, the distributor and channel provider have been able to reach an agreement while avoiding a blackout, as was the case for YouTube TV with Fox and NBCUniversal earlier this year. Typically, the NFL and college football are a deciding factor in making a deal, which made the blackout (which included two Monday Night Football games) all the more surprising. There were indications in the ratings that the outage was impacting Disney channel audiences, with YouTube TV having around 10 million subscribers.
Disney’s breakdown was unusually public and bitter, with Disney executives telling employees that YouTube’s “actions clearly demonstrate how little respect they have for their customers and are consistent with an attitude that has prevailed throughout our negotiations: YouTube TV and its owner, Google, are not interested in reaching a fair deal with us,” they continued. “Instead, they want to use their extraordinary power and resources to eliminate competition and devalue the very content that helped them grow their service. »
A source said that as negotiations dragged on, Disney CEO Bob Iger and Google CEO Sundar Pichai had to be brought into the negotiations to expedite some key points of decision-making.
Money (of course) was seen as the biggest sticking point, with complicating players like most-favored-nation clauses, and whether the tariff changes if and when YouTube TV goes through Charter and Comcast to become the largest pay TV provider in the United States, as well as the tariffs that should apply to Disney’s entertainment channels, given that most, if not all, of their content is available through Disney+ or Hulu.
