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YouTube TV Could Lose ABC, ESPN, National Geographic, FX, and Disney Channels and Drop Price as a Result
Last updated December 14, 2021
- YouTube TV could lose ESPN, ABC, FX, National Geographic, Disney, and other channels starting December 17.
- The platform will pull down all 18 Disney-owned networks in their offer if they can't come to a deal.
- If this happens, the company will also lower its subscription price to reflect the losses.
The Google-owned YouTube TV platform and The Walt Disney Company appear to be having trouble coming to a new streaming deal after the current contract between the two companies ends on Friday. If their collaboration ceases, the streaming service announced a hefty price drop to justify removing 18 channels from the pack, including National Geographic, ABC, FX, ESPN, and Disney channels.
YouTube TV started notifying its subscribers that it would lose The Walt Disney Company's suite of channels, which could pose challenges for the streaming and live TV platform's subscribers. The live TV and streaming service says they discussed continuing to carry Disney-owned channels with the company, asking them "to treat YouTube TV like any other TV provider – by offering us the same rates that services of a similar size pay."
All 18 Disney-owned channels would disappear if they failed to reach the new agreement by December 17. However, the monthly subscription price will also become $15 cheaper to reflect the losses, dropping from $64.99 per month to $49.99 per month. If that happens, people can subscribe to the Disney Bundle separately for $13.99 per month.
Many subscribers might not be satisfied with losing so many channels from their subscription pack, especially ABC and ESPN during the holiday NCAA bowl season and all of their other programming. However, it's difficult to predict if the Google-owned video platform will reach a deal with Disney.
YouTube TV could lose the following channels if the deal expires:
- 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
- ESPNU
- ESPNEWS
- SEC Network A
- CC Network
It is the second time Google has held a similar position with media companies in the past few months. YouTube TV was about to suffer a $10 price drop and stop broadcasting all NBC Universal networks when their contract expired at the end of September. Yet, in early October, YouTube TV and NBC Universal announced reaching a new deal.
However, YouTube TV was quite present in the news this year, starting with February, when it announced a new add-on for 4K streaming, offline viewing of 4K content, and no limit to simultaneous streams, and continuing with the Roku ruckus in May.
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