ABC, ESPN, and other slews of Disney's suite of networks have gone dark on YouTube TV after Google And Disney fails to reach a new agreement and forge a new deal before the deadline on Friday, December 17.
After a carriage-dispute with Disney, it is the first major blackout for YouTube in its five-year history. As a result, Google announced that it will reduce YouTube TV's monthly price by $15 -- from $64.99 to $49.99 -- now that Disney has pulled out its networks from YouTube TV.
Google's YouTube TV and Disney had a previous pact for ABC-owned TV stations, ESPN networks, Disney channels, Freeform, the FX networks, and the National Geographic channels but ran its course after the pact expired on December 17, Friday, at 11:59 P.M. ET.
In a statement released by Google, they said that, "We’ve held good-faith negotiations with Disney for several months. Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, we’ve been unable to reach an equitable agreement before our existing one expired, and their channels are no longer available on YouTube TV. We will be decreasing our monthly price by $15, from $64.99 to $49.99, while this content remains off of our platform. We know this is frustrating news for our customers, and not what we wanted. We will continue conversations with Disney to advocate on your behalf in hopes of restoring their content on YouTube TV.”
However, even with a price reduction, YouTube TV will surely lose a number of subscribers over the blackout. The priciest cable network on the pay-TV dial, ESPN, has been lost to the company just as college bowl season kicks off.
Disney, meanwhile, blames Google at their failure to reach an agreement. In a statement to Variety, Disney revealed that, "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.”
Money seemed to be the cause of the dispute. Google had claimed earlier that Disney was demanding higher fees for its TV networks than "services of a similar size pay", according to the internet giant's blog post.
The list of Disney-owned channels that have been pulled off from YouTube TV include local ABC channels, ABC News Live, Disney Channel, Disney Junior, Disney XD, Freeform, FX, FXX, FXM, National Geographic, National Geographic Wil, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN3 (via the ESPN app), ESPNU, ESPNews, SEC Network, and ACC Network.
Earlier in the fall, Google had also faced a similar situation with their standoff against NBCUniversal before both companies came to an agreement. Google were prepared to cut $10 off the monthly price of YouTube TV if the NBCU will also pull off their channels.
