YouTube TV has failed to reach a new contract with Disney and has lost ABC, ESPN, and several other channels. As a result, Google’s cord-cutting service temporarily costs $49.99 until the dispute is resolved.
As first detailed at the start of this week, the previous deal expired on December 17. As of 12 a.m. ET, the following channels are no longer available on YouTube TV:
- Your local ABC channel
- ABC News Live
- Disney Channel
- Disney Junior
- Disney XD
- Freeform
- FX
- FXX
- FXM
- National Geographic
- National Geographic Wild
- ESPN
- ESPN2
- ESPN3 (by authentication to the ESPN app)
- ESPNU
- ESPNEWS
- SEC Network
- ACC Network
The channels are gone from the “Live” tab and search, while previous Library recordings have also been removed.
Google said it wants Disney to “treat YouTube TV like any other TV provider – by offering us the same rates that services of a similar size pay, across Disney’s channels for as long as we carry them.” The temporary $15/month price drop lasts “while Disney content remains off of our platform.” No user action is required, and it takes the form of a credit:
Once the content is unavailable, this credit will be applied to your next bill after December 17 and will only be visible to family managers in Settings > Billing after the charge has taken place. Please note that if you have a promotional price with YouTube TV, you can still expect a $15 credit.
Earlier in the day, various Disney channels ran TV spots linking to keepmydisney.com.
Content negotiations are usually resolved at the last second, which was the case with Google and NBCUniversal in October following a brief extension. That clearly did not occur with Disney today. Google says that “good faith” negotiations have been ongoing for the past several months.
Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, we were unable to reach an equitable agreement before our existing one expired.
We know this is frustrating news, and it is not the outcome we wanted. We will continue conversations with Disney to advocate on your behalf in hopes of restoring their content on YouTube TV.
For its part, YouTube TV has told its customers to sign-up for Disney’s services:
If you would like to keep watching some of Disney’s content, consider signing up for Disney’s own streaming service, The Disney Bundle, which they offer for $13.99/month. YouTube TV is not endorsing or affiliated with any of these services, which are subject to its own terms and conditions.
Disney this evening had the follow comment:
We’ve been in ongoing negotiations with Google’s YouTube TV and unfortunately, they have declined to reach a fair deal with us based on market terms and conditions. As a result, their subscribers have lost access to our unrivaled portfolio of networks including live sports and news plus kids, family and general entertainment programming from ABC, the ESPN networks, the Disney channels, Freeform, the FX networks and the National Geographic channels. We stand ready to reach an equitable agreement with Google as quickly as possible in order to minimize the inconvenience to YouTube TV viewers by restoring our networks. We hope Google will join us in that effort.
More on YouTube TV:
- Roku and Google reach last-minute ‘multi-year’ deal to keep YouTube app
- Some ‘loyal’ YouTube TV subscribers are getting a small discount on their next bill
- YouTube TV now supports Safari for Mac, while website currently works on iPadOS with PiP
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