00:00We've seen a lot of ESPN talent like Laura Rutledge, Scott Van Pelt, Stephen A. Smith
00:03talk about this carriage fight with YouTube TV. But what I thought was really interesting is
00:08Kirk Herbstreit and even the SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey tell people, OK, go sign up for Hulu
00:13Live. Is because Hulu Live is a competitor with YouTube TV, is that a sticking point here? Almost
00:18that they could drag this out to get as many subscribers as they can because it's a competitor.
00:22Yeah, again, it certainly doesn't help and it particularly complicates these negotiations.
00:30And as you correctly point out, Disney's got a lot of notable personalities in their corporate
00:36umbrella who can be out there to help with the messaging on this issue.
00:39Eric, we've seen these carriage fights before, but usually they're with cable companies.
00:43This time, obviously, it's a tech company like Google. What sort of makes this a little bit
00:47different here?
00:48Yeah, there's some particular cost pressures at play here that as YouTube TV has become
00:55the number four paid distributor in the U.S., they're originally set up as the low cost alternative
01:02to the three in front of them, Charter, Comcast and DirecTV. But as more and more of these disputes
01:09come along and the overall programming costs go up, they look a lot more like one, two and
01:15three. And the monthly bills look a lot more like one, two and three. And it just makes
01:19it harder and harder for YouTube TV to kind of just accept this and move along. Because
01:26again, then their monthly costs look like everybody else.
01:29We've seen a lot of people complaining about this on social media, even people like J.J.
01:34Watt complaining that he wasn't able to watch Monday Night Football, albeit he didn't say
01:38YouTube TV was the reason. But now it seems like we're in this new era now of so many paywalls.
01:44Is this going to become an issue for people not being able to access a lot of ESPN stuff down
01:49the road?
01:50Yeah. And it's important to note that YouTube TV index is pretty hard among sports fans.
01:56So I think this is also part of why we're seeing this so much in our world and this issue bubble
02:02up to the degree that it has. Not only are we talking about, you know, big companies that play
02:08and we're at a particularly busy point of the sports calendar, but there are just a lot of sports
02:13fans out there who have this particular service, maybe more so on an average basis than some of
02:20the others. And again, this is all feeding into why this issue is bubbling up the way that it is.
02:25Eric, we'll get you out of here on this. Any things that you're watching in the next few days
02:29regarding this and how much longer do you think potentially this could go for?
02:32Yeah. Again, I'm really looking for external pressure right at the top of the list. Again,
02:38FCC chair, Brendan Carr, but others like you mentioned, Greg Sankey and other league commissioners,
02:44other network heads, anybody else who is sort of weighing in potentially on this situation,
02:50implying additional pressure beyond what exists between the two companies.
02:54That's something I'm really looking out for.
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