Technologies

Disney-YouTube TV Contract Dispute Drags On Despite Desires by Officials

YouTube TV’s customers have been unable to watch ABC, ESPN and other Disney channels for two weeks. Could a resolution come this week?

It’s now been two weeks since YouTube TV customers have been able to watch any of Disney’s streaming channels, including ABC, ESPN and the ACC and SEC networks. Disney’s portfolio of channels was removed from YouTube TV on Oct. 30, and there’s no indication when the outage will end, despite the potentially devastating losses both companies are suffering.

On Thursday, Walt Disney Co. CEO Bob Iger said his company is «working tirelessly» to close a deal with YouTube «on a timely basis» to restore its channels to the platform.

«We’re not trying to really break any new ground,» he said during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call. «It’s also imperative that we make sure that we agree to a deal that reflects the value that we deliver.»

The disagreement causing the ABC and ESPN outage stems from the «carriage fee» that YouTube TV pays Disney to broadcast its channels. Disney has faced similar negotiating standoffs with other broadcasters in recent years, including an earlier 2021 outage on YouTube TV that was resolved in two days.

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Disney says YouTube TV isn’t paying enough to stream its channels. YouTube TV, owned by Google, has the most subscribers among all internet TV providers, with over 9 million. Hulu, owned by Disney, is second with 4.3 million subscribers through its Hulu + Live TV offering.

«The deal that we have proposed is equal to or better than what other large distributors have already agreed to,» Iger said Thursday.

While the two sides wrangle over the fees, they risk further losses. Nearly a quarter of YouTube TV subscribers (24%) have canceled or intend to cancel their subscription because the service «no longer delivers the core content they signed up for,» according to a survey cited by Variety.

Disney, meanwhile, is losing an estimated $30 million in revenue per week while its channels are unavailable on YouTube TV, according to a Morgan Stanley research note cited by Variety. That’s a significant chunk of change because each week Disney’s networks are dark on YouTube TV, Disney’s adjusted earnings per share drop by 2 cents, analysts say.

When will ESPN, ABC and other Disney channels return to YouTube TV?

Disney is no stranger to carriage fees feuds, and as with previous disputes, negotiations are under wraps, and how long it will continue is anyone’s guess. Disney’s contract conflict with Sling TV in 2022 lasted just two days, while the one with Spectrum/Charter in 2023 wasn’t resolved for 10 days.

Disney’s contract conflicts from previous years were mostly resolved in a week or two, but Google has considerably more bargaining power than those other platforms.

Thursday marked 14 days that Disney’s channels had been blacked out on YouTube TV — a day longer than the Disney outage on DirectTV last year. How much longer this outage will continue is unknown, but the Morgan Stanley analysts who pegged Disney’s weekly losses at $30 million sounded an optimistic note in predicting that the outage will be resolved later this week.

When a deal is reached between Disney and YouTube, the missing channels will return «in a matter of hours,» according to Variety.

What are Disney and YouTube TV saying about the dispute?

On Oct. 30, YouTube TV posted on X, «Members, when we renew our contracts with network partners, we advocate for fair pricing to offer you the best TV experience.»

«Google’s YouTube TV has chosen to deny its subscribers the content they value most by refusing to pay fair rates for our channels, including ESPN and ABC,» Disney said in a statement to CNBC.

In a memo to employees on Oct. 31 that was also reported by CNBC, Disney accused YouTube TV of deleting «previously recorded shows and events from their subscribers’ libraries.»

«YouTube TV and its owner, Google, are not interested in achieving a fair deal with us,» Disney Entertainment co-chairs Dana Walden and Alan Bergman and ESPN Chairman Jimmy Pitaro said in the memo. «Instead, they want to use their power and extraordinary resources to eliminate competition and devalue the very content that helped them build their service.»

Disney is also asking its viewers to ask YouTube TV to bring back its broadcasting via the keepmynetworks.com site.

Which Disney channels were removed from YouTube TV?

Sports fans aren’t the only viewers left sidelined by the loss of Disney channels from YouTube TV. Here are all the channels that have been removed from the streaming service:

ABC
ABC News Live
ACC Network
Baby TV Español (Spanish Plan)
Disney Channel
Disney Junior
Disney XD
ESPN
ESPN Deportes (Spanish Plan)
ESPNews
ESPNU
ESPN2
Freeform
FX
FXM
FXX
Localish
Nat Geo
Nat Geo Mundo (Spanish Plan)
Nat Geo Wild
SEC Network

How can YouTube TV subscribers watch football games during the Disney outage?

YouTube TV subscribers with an aerial TV antenna can still watch Monday Night Football and college football games on ABC if they live close enough to receive an over-the-air broadcast signal from a local ABC affiliate.

Other than that, the only real option for viewers who want to watch all of the college football and basketball games this weekend and Monday Night Football at home is to subscribe to another service that provides ABC and ESPN, including ESPN+, Sling TV, Hulu + Live TV, Fubo or DirecTV Stream.

Sling TV offers a $5 Day Pass that could be a good option for viewers who want to watch one specific game, as well as a $10 Weekend Pass that would give you college football and basketball games for both days.

For those looking to find football games at local establishments, this handy app can help you find places that are showing the games.

A $20 credit for YouTube TV subscribers?

YouTube TV had promised subscribers a $20 credit for the streaming service if the Disney channels outage continued for an extended period, and on Sunday, the streaming service announced the details of that credit.

Some YouTube subscribers will receive the $20 credit automatically, and others will need to claim it online. According to a YouTube spokesperson, subscribers who pay with Google Play billing or through their mobile service should receive the $20 credit automatically.

If you need to claim the $20 credit, you should receive an email from YouTube TV this week. After you’ve received your email, follow these steps:

Log in to YouTube.com with a web browser
Click or tap on your profile picture
Click or tap Settings.
You can also directly browse to the URL at https://tv.youtube.com/settings/service_updates.
At the bottom of the menu on the left, select Updates.
On the following screen, which explains the Disney channels outage, click or tap the blue button marked Claim Credit.

Emails from YouTube TV started going out Sunday night and several Reddit posters have already reported receiving the $20 credit. All of the credits for YouTube TV subscribers should be issued by Wednesday, Nov. 12, according to Variety.

The $20 credit will be applied to your next billing cycle.

We asked YouTube if additional billing credits would be offered to subscribers if the outage continues. A spokesperson replied, «This is a situation that is evolving, and we will let subscribers know of future additional credit offers. Our main priority is to reach an agreement that restores Disney’s content to YouTube TV.»

Correction, Nov. 5: An earlier version of this story failed to note that Sling TV day and weekend passes can be used to watch local ABC affiliates only in certain markets.

Technologies

TikTok to Let Apple Music Users Stream Full Songs Without Ever Leaving the App

TikTok and Apple Music come together to introduce two new features to the music listening experience.

If you’ve ever scrolled TikTok, caught a snippet of a tune, and thought, «I wish I could play this song all the way through,» this is for you. TikTok and Apple Music announced on Wednesday that they have partnered on two new features, Play Full Song and Listening Party. The goal is to offer listeners a seamless music listening experience without ever leaving the social media app.

Apple Music subscribers who discover a song on their TikTok For You Page or on the Sound Detail Page will be able to click Play Full Song to open the Apple Music player and listen to the track in its entirety. From there, subscribers to the music streaming service will be able to save the song as a favorite, add it to a playlist on Apple Music and listen to a customized stream of recommended songs.

When a full-length song is played, the stream will pay artists through Apple Music.

«Tapping into the music you love should feel effortless,» Ole Obermann, co-head of Apple Music, said in a statement. «With Play Full Song, Apple Music subscribers can move easily from discovering a track on TikTok to listening to it in full instantly, without breaking the flow. This integration not only makes it easier for fans to discover, listen to, and engage with the artists they love, but also creates a powerful new pathway for artists — turning moments of discovery into deeper connection and sustained engagement in one simple, seamless experience.»

Listening Party sounds somewhat like Spotify‘s feature of the same name. Fans join a shared, real-time session where they listen to the same tracks together and interact live, with the songs streamed through Apple Music inside TikTok. Musicians can also join and chat with their fans.

«TikTok is where music discovery and culture move at the speed of the community,» Tracy Gardner, global head of music business development at TikTok, said in a statement. «Thanks to Apple Music, Play Full Song gives fans a seamless way to go from discovery to full-length listening, and Listening Party provides a shared place to experience music together in real time. It’s all about bringing artists and fans closer, and turning shared moments into lasting connections.»

Play Full Song and Listening Party will launch globally on TikTok over the next few weeks.

Technologies

AI Chatbots Are Making People All Think the Same, Study Says

A new paper argues that humans are losing varied ways of thinking due to the use of chatbots, and that’s concerning.

Part of what makes us human is the unique ways we think and solve problems. But using large language models like ChatGPT might be eroding this uniqueness and leading humans to think and communicate the same way, according to a group of scientists and psychologists who have co-authored a new opinion paper.

«Individuals differ in how they write, reason, and view the world,» Zhivar Sourati, a computer scientist of the University of Southern California and first author for the paper, said in a statement.

«When these differences are mediated by the same LLMs, their distinct linguistic style, perspective and reasoning strategies become homogenized, producing standardized expressions and thoughts across users,» Sourati continued.

The paper, published Wednesday in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences, examines how hundreds of millions of people worldwide use the same handful of chatbots and what that means for our individuality.

Thinking inside the box

Pew Research found that one-third of all Americans used ChatGPT last year, double the 2023 figure. And chatbot use is much more common among teens: Two-thirds say they use chatbots, and almost a third use them daily.

Businesses are also going all in on artificial intelligence. Stanford found that 78% of organizations reported using AI in 2024, up from 55% in 2023.

So we’re using AI a lot. But the danger is that we could lose the diversity in the ways we think. The team points out that LLMs generate writing that varies less than what people come up with on their own.

Part of the reason LLMs may be pushing homogenized thought, according to the paper’s authors, is the data used to train them.

«Because LLMs are trained to capture and reproduce statistical regularities in their training data, which often overrepresent dominant languages and ideologies, their outputs often mirror a narrow and skewed slice of human experience,» Sourati says.

Why diverse thinking matters

There’s a good reason why the authors warn against this trend. Homogenized thought reduces pluralism, which is essentially the idea that multiple perspectives are good for society as a whole.

«This value of pluralism is rooted in the long-held principle that sound judgment requires exposure to varied thought,» the authors write in the paper. «Unchecked, this homogenization risks flattening the cognitive landscapes that drive collective intelligence and adaptability,»

So we use different ways of thinking to figure out more solutions to a problem. If we lose the ability to think and communicate differently, it could affect how we adapt to new situations.

«The concern is not just that LLMs shape how people write or speak, but that they subtly redefine what counts as credible speech, correct perspective, or even good reasoning,» Sourati says.

The authors also say that this trend even impacts people who don’t use chatbots.

«If a lot of people around me are thinking and speaking in a certain way, and I do things differently, I would feel a pressure to align with them, because it would seem like a more credible or socially acceptable way of expressing my ideas,» Sourati says.