TV Answer Man, I am a YouTube TV subscriber and I am not happy that I can’t watch ESPN. Do you have any suggestions or tips on what to do until it comes back. If it does come back!! If it doesn’t soon, I’m switching. — Bob, San Diego.
Update: Disney & YouTube TV Sign New Deal; Blackout Over
Bob, as you know, YouTube TV, the multi-channel, live streaming service, early Saturday morning lost 17 Disney-owned channels due to a fight over carriage fees. The list of affected channels includes ESPN, FX, Freeform, National Geographic, the Disney Channel and eight Disney-owned ABC stations, among others.
But it seems that the loss of ESPN is generating more anger than the other Disney channels combined. The sports network has the broadcast rights to 37 college football bowl games this season with seven just yesterday. Since the bowl games are not available on ESPN+, there would seem to be no convenient or inexpensive way for YouTube TV to watch the games.
CNET yesterday published an article suggesting Hulu Live is the best alternative for disaffected YouTube TV subscribers since the Disney-owned (!) streamer carries the entire suite of Disney channels. But before you do that, I suggest you do this, particularly if your main priority is to watch the bowl games and other live ESPN events:
Click Amazon: See Today’s Holiday Deals!
Get Sling TV.
Why Sling?
Like Hulu Live, the Dish-owned streaming service carries ESPN (in its Orange plan.) But Sling’s first month of service is available for just $10 while Hulu Live costs $64.99 a month (and rises to $70 on December 22.).
I suspect this dispute will not last more than a month — and it might be just a week or less — so you can continuing watching ESPN for just $10 rather than $65 if you subscribed to Hulu Live.
Sling’s Orange package also includes the Disney Channel, National Geographic and Freeform so you can continue to get your Disney-flavored fix as well.
If the fee fight extends more than month, you can reassess this choice. But for now, doing this rather than that is the best bet for YouTube TV’s sports fans.
Bob, hope that helps. Happy viewing, and stay safe!
Have a question about new TV technologies? Send it to The TV Answer Man at swann@tvpredictions.com. Please include your first name and hometown in your message.
— Phillip Swann
It sill baffles us to no end that a considerable amount of subscribers continue blaming YouTube TV for “taking away” their Disney owned channels such as ESPN. I guess they believe the alternate facts from Disney and other content providers when carriage agreements are up for renewal. Think of Disney as a landlord who wants to raise your rent. The tenant in this case is YouTube TV. The tenant is not agreeing to the rent increase. Yet, Disney, like other content providers, blame the tenant. If the tenant does not agree to said increase, they do not have the legal right to offer the channel(s) in question on their service. How is that the tenant’s fault? It is a ploy that content providers keep using to make the service provider look like the bad guy when the opposite is true. Further, if the tenant agrees to any part of the rate increase, your Pay TV bill goes up. The content providers claim they want to be paid “fair market value” for their product even when it has not changed or improved. Local channel owners claim the same reason in order to charge a fee for free-over-the-air TV service. It’s time for the public to rearrange their mental furniture so they can see how they are being mislead. We strongly recommend looking into AVOD and FAST offerings for alternative options which continue to get better everyday as the competition increases. Happy viewing!
Sticking with your thesis, disney just kicked googles dog because google didn’t pay up in time?
Google had a long time to negotiate this, and I’m done with being part of their persistent negotiation issues. LOL, google at one time (perhaps still) could have bought up 75-80% of all video content and then could have become the worlds largest production company.
But they aren’t.
This would be a lot easier to live with if ESPN+ (to which I already subscribe) was equivalent to having ESPN channels (or could be upgraded to be so). But instead you have to dive in for a Hulu + Live TV or FuboTV subscription to get something similar to what YouTube TV was offering previously.
I’m using Directv Stream as a backup plan and it works well. Very annoying.
If Google doesn’t like what Disney is doing to them they should create their own valuable content that everyone demands and then they can self-deal it to themselves for a discount while gouging others. But there doesn’t seem to be room for a discount service provider who doesn’t benefit from some of their own cheap content.
What does Google make? Disney is the content maker.. they own all these channels and fund the development of the programming. YouTube TV is just a toll booth that Google set up on the information super highway. We may never have a-la-carte TV programming, but buying the content we want directly from the creators is the next best thing. It’s time to cut out the middlemen.
Yet Disney won’t sell us the rights to stream their content directly. Funny how that works, eh?
I’m paying google to deliver tv channels into my home. I’m not paying Disney.
Imagine you’ve gotten a contractor to build a home for you and you’ve agreed on a price. Then when construction is about to start, the builder lets you know that they can’t get the lumber prices you want and that you should call the lumber company up and threaten them to get the price down.
This is why I hired a builder in the first place. So I wouldn’t have the job.
I don’t care whose fault it was. If I dragged my salary negotiations into my customers and had them calling my boss to give me a raise, I’d have been fired.
I’m not paying Disney. I’m paying google for a product that presumably isn’t threatened with lost channels every month. So Google should have worked this out months ago instead of at the last minute.
Now I’m not paying google either. Dug my old tivo out and I’m getting 45 channels OTA, and I have a few streaming services. More than I can ever watch.
Thanks Google, linear live tv DID die about 5-7 years ago.
Did you mean Disney+, Espn+ and Hulu along with hulu live tv?