Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Audio / Video

YouTube TV loses Disney-owned channels, including ESPN, FX, and ABC

By

Update December 19: YouTube TV and Disney have reached a deal.

YouTube TV and Disney have failed to reach an agreement for the former to carry channels owned by the latter, leading to the loss of some 18 channels from the streaming service owned by Alphabet, the umbrella company over Google and YouTube, Nest, and more.

Recommended Videos

YouTube TV first warned customers on December 13 that the two companies had been unable to work out a deal, and that channels would be lost after the current agreement expired on December 17. YouTube TV said that it would lower its monthly price by $15 to $50 a month while the Disney-owned channels are unavailable, and that customers would receive a credit.

Related

“Our ask to Disney,” the official YouTube blog wrote on December 13, “as with all our partners, is 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.”

Overnight into December 18, after the agreement expired and the Disney-owned channels disappeared, YouTube TV issued an update:

“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 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.”

YouTube TV on Apple TV.
Phil Nickinson/Digital Trends

The list of channels no longer available on YouTube TV includes:

  • ABC News Live
  • ACC Network
  • Disney Channel
  • Disney Junior
  • Disney XD
  • ESPN
  • ESPN2
  • ESPN3 (by authentication to the ESPN app)
  • ESPNEWS
  • ESPNU
  • FX
  • FXM
  • FXX
  • Freeform
  • National Geographic
  • National Geographic Wild
  • SEC Network
  • Your local ABC channel

The impasse comes just weeks after YouTube TV’s highly public feud with Roku, which finally ended with the two sides reaching a deal that kept YouTube TV on the Roku platform and made the YouTube proper app once again available for download.

But this latest flap comes at a particularly inopportune time for YouTube TV, as it’s the start of the college football postseason, with dozens of games scheduled to be broadcast on ESPN or ABC through the national title game on January 10. It’s also the time of year in which college basketball is in full swing.

There’s no telling just how long the Disney-owned channels will remain off YouTube TV, but the loss likely affects several million subscribers. YouTube TV hasn’t given a new count since October 2020, when it announced that it had “more than 3 million” paid subscriptions to the service. (By comparison, Hulu With Live TV just announced it had 4 million paid subs.)

In the meantime, suffice it to say that we’ll see customers head over to competitors like Hulu With Live TV, Sling TV, or FuboTV.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Phil Nickinson
Phil Nickinson
Section Editor, Audio/Video
Phil spent the 2000s making newspapers with the Pensacola (Fla.) News Journal, the 2010s with Android Central and then the…
YouTube TV just added a huge new add-on for $15 a month
Zee Family on YouTube TV.

Zee Family is now available on YouTube TV for $15 a month. Phil Nickinson / Digital Trends

YouTube TV is still limited to the U.S., but it just brought a big piece of the world to the streaming service. The Zee Family add-on brings a number of channels from a range of Indian dialects to the service. It costs $15 a month and has a free seven-day trial.

Read more
YouTube TV tips and tricks: how to get the most out Google’s live TV service
YouTube TV app icon on Apple TV.

There’s a reason YouTube TV has found itself the leader in live-streaming video. In fact, it has about twice as many subscribers to its cable-TV replacement as the next biggest platform. And. among other reasons like price, reliability, and abundance of channels, it is just packed with features.
In fact, YouTube TV has so many features tucked away in there that you’ll be forgiven if you don’t spot them all at first. But we’ve done the legwork. We’ve watched hours and hours of YouTube TV. Weeks and months, really. We’ve flipped all the buttons. We’ve pressed all the switches. (Wait — reverse that.) And we’ve put together a list of what we think are the most important — if not always obvious — YouTube TV tips and tricks. And we're not just talking about NFL Sunday Ticket.
This isn’t everything. There are still a few other places to explore in the settings menu, as well as when you’re watching shows and movies. But these are the YouTube TV tips and tricks we absolutely think you must know.

Record a show to watch later

Read more
This long-awaited YouTube TV feature is a channel-flipper’s dream
The previous channel feature on YouTube TV on a TV.

The move from cable to streaming for live TV changed a lot of things. Choice, for one. (We have more.) Price, for another. (You're likely paying less.) But not all changes were great. If you're of the channel-surfing variety — or love to flip back and forth between two channels — you've likely been missing that feature.

YouTube TV — the most popular streaming service in the U.S. with more than 8 million subscribers — has addressed the latter. After having been teased in some A/B testing for a while now (that is, some folks saw it, and most didn't), it looks like the ability to hop back and forth between two channels is now rolling out more broadly.

Read more