Earlier today, Disney asked YouTube TV to reactivate its ABC channels for Election Day coverage. YouTube has now responded publicly to the request.
YouTube Responds to Disney ABC Restoration Request
Disney’s networks went dark for YouTube TV subscribers on October 30 as the two companies reached an impasse regarding a new carriage deal. While negotiations continue, Disney asked for YouTube TV to make ABC available on YouTube TV for 24 hours to provide news coverage of Election Day on Tuesday, November 4.
YouTube has now responded publicly with a post made on their official blog — prefacing it by stating that this is an email sent to Disney leadership — denying Disney’s request due to potential consumer confusion:
Thanks for your proposal.
We agree that the right priority here is to give customers what they want. As you know from the many content disputes you’ve been part of, customers don’t want companies fighting and content blackouts. But unfortunately, your proposal would permit us to return Disney’s ABC stations only for a day and will cause customer confusion among those who may briefly see ABC on YouTube TV only to lose it again shortly after.
There are plenty of other options for customers – election news information is very widely available across other broadcast stations and news networks on YouTube TV, as well as on the main YouTube service, for free. In fact, on the last two U.S. election days, the vast majority of tuned in YouTube TV subscribers chose not to watch ABC.
Publicly resorting to the same tactic that Disney relied on in past disputes fails to acknowledge the distinction between YouTube and other distribution platforms. As you know, Disney can continue to livestream news information on the ABC News YouTube page, which has 19.1M subscribers, and its ABC local stations can also do so on their YouTube pages.
To truly achieve what is best for our mutual customers, we propose immediately restoring the Disney channels that our customers watch: ABC and the ESPN networks, while we continue to negotiate. Those are the channels that people want.
If you agree with our proposal and give us approval, we can get our operational teams together and get these channels live in hours. Let us know how you’d like to proceed.
More importantly, let’s get a fair deal done so we can get back to providing our mutual customers with the content they want. Thank you.
Disney executives have said YouTube TV parent company Google isn’t interested in “a fair deal” while a YouTube executive said Disney is “unnecessarily aggressive and assertive.”
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