If you’ve seen Fox or Fox News via YouTube TV, you may have heard the warning: Since Monday, Fox has told viewers that their channels may have been drawn from YouTube TV.
This is not about censorship or political attachments or something similar. It’s because mom and pop are fighting. Fox and Google have suffered from a bust-up over what is called a carriage deal, which is how much YouTube TV pays Fox to carry its products.
As Hollywood Reporter explains: “August and September are often critical times for transport agreements as they coincide with the start of the NFL season.” It’s bad news if Fox’s predictions come true and the channels are drawn: “If the Fox channels go dark, YouTube customers would in markets with a Fox-owned station lose access to their local NFL games as well as college football and MLB playoffs.”
What’s going on with Fox and YouTube TV – and what you can do about it
What happens here is that Fox basically emits dirty laundry in public and claims that “we are disappointed that Google is constantly taking advantage of its great influence by proposing conditions that are out of step with the market”. And of course, there are two pages for every story, and Google’s side is that “Fox asks for payments that are far higher than what partners with comparable content offers receive.”
This is not the first time this has happened. Disney pulled channels from charter communication last year, and earlier this year it seemed as if paramount channels, including CBS, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon, were drawn for similar reasons. But in both cases, the respective parties eventually reached an agreement, and in the case of Paramount’s case, the channels did not go down at all.
It will probably happen here too. But if it does not, you are not out of options: Fox has launched its own streaming service, Fox One, and says it wants it to be available to anyone who pays for traditional payment TV services. So if Fox disappears from YouTube TV, you can watch its channels there – and YouTube says that if the channels go dark for “a longer period”, it gives you a credit of $ 10.
