NBCUniversal and YouTube TV have reached a short-term extension as they negotiate a new carriage deal.
The companies’ current agreement was slated to expire at midnight ET on Tuesday.
In a statement provided to Deadline, a YouTube TV spokesperson said, “We’ve reached a short-term extension to avoid disruption to our service while we work toward a new agreement with NBCUniversal. We appreciate our subscribers’ patience while we negotiate on their behalf.”
The news came shortly after TelevisaUnivision‘s networks, including giant Hispanic broadcast outlet Univision, went dark on YouTube TV. TelevisaUnivision’s current deal also expired Tuesday at midnight ET. YouTube TV is already in talks with Disney and ESPN for a renewal of an agreement expiring in a few weeks.
While carriage disputes are far from uncommon, especially as the economics of pay-TV become increasingly pressured in an era of cord-cutting, YouTube TV as a distributor has a unique profile. It is now the No. 4 operator in the U.S., having surpassed 10 million subscribers just eight years after it launched. It is also growing while the Top 3 (Charter, Comcast and DirecTV) are shrinking.
Unlike other cable or satellite providers, YouTube TV is part of a tech behemoth that is not particularly beholden to the entertainment business. Parent company Google’s $3 trillion market cap frequently cited by those across the bargaining table, who say that dynamic makes the service less willing to compromise. It also may have informed its decision to raise prices twice (a total uptick of $18) in less than two years.
NBCU first started warning viewers last week about the looming deadline, running on-screen crawls and blasting out messages across social media that YouTube was “at it again.” In one sense, they weren’t incorrect. Prior to the dustups with NBCU and TelevisaUnivision, YouTube TV had nearly blacked out Paramount and Fox networks, reaching deals with both media companies after tensions spilled into public view.
One core issue in the YouTube TV-NBCU impasse has been the tech company’s push to “ingest” streaming programming from NBCU as opposed to merely integrating Peacock into its channel offerings.
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