Spectrum customers have lost all Disney (ABC, ESPN) channels. Here’s Friday’s update.
Spectrum cable customers have lost access to Disney-owned channels as a result of an ongoing contract disagreement — one that Spectrum’s parent company describes as “not a classic carriage dispute.”
Charter Communications, which owns Spectrum, has been negotiating its carriage contract with The Walt Disney Company for months, without resolution.
Disney networks went dark on Spectrum Thursday at 8 p.m. ET.
In a call to shareholders and media Friday morning, Charter executives gave a broad outline of their efforts to propose a new, more collaborative model with Disney that would keep customers who don’t watch Disney channels from paying higher fees that accompany the bundling of Disney’s more than two dozen networks.
Disney rejected the proposal, said Charter executives, and “reverted to the tired playbook of trying to squeeze every last dollar” out of consumers.
Carriers like Charter, AT&T/DirecTV, YouTube, Sling, Hulu and DISH pay cable networks and TV station owners a monthly license fee to carry their signals. Disney packages are expensive to cable, satellite and streaming carriers because of the number of networks they own and the fact that they require companies to carry all of them, with no a la carte options.
Bottom line: don’t expect a quick outcome this time.
Two things to know from the Charter call:
Charter Spectrum will offer discounts to customers during the outage. Call customer service for details: (833) 267-6094.
Charter Spectrum says that about 25% of their customers “regularly engage” with Disney content and about half of those customers are “highly engaged” with the content. Charter says it will work with those customers to find other options to access Disney content (likely through a partner streaming service), if Disney is permanently removed.
Here’s what Disney says
Disney said in a statement on Thursday that the deal they are seeking with Charter is a “market-based agreement.”
“Disney Entertainment has successful deals in place with pay TV providers of all types and sizes across the country, and the rates and terms we are seeking in this renewal are driven by the marketplace,” the statement read. “We’re committed to reaching a mutually agreed upon resolution with Charter and we urge them to work with us to minimize the disruption to their customers.”
What Charter Spectrum customers lose right now
The loss of Disney networks means the loss of ESPN, ABC (including the Disney-owned affiliate ABC11 serving the Raleigh and Durham market), FX, National Geographic and many other networks. Charlotte’s ABC affiliate, WSOC, is owned by Cox Media Group, and shouldn’t be affected by the outage.
The most pain will be felt by college football fans, hoping to watch this weekend’s opening games on ESPN’s various networks and on ABC.
The University of North Carolina and the University of South Carolina face off Saturday in ESPN College GameDay’s feature game, the Duke’s Mayo Classic in Charlotte. That game, which will air on ABC, will not be available for Spectrum customers, unless a deal is made before then. In other local ACC action, Clemson plays at Duke on Monday at 8 p.m., in a game airing on ESPN.
Not the only ongoing outage in Raleigh market
Raleigh’s CBS affiliate CBS 17 has been dark for AT&T/DirecTV customers since the beginning of July because of a contract dispute between that company and Nexstar, which owns CBS 17.
The contract dispute is also over retransmission or carriage fees. The outage impacts about 10 million customers and more than 150 local TV stations, forcing them “to go dark on one of the country’s largest pay-TV providers,” Deadline reported. Nexstar stations affected nationwide include ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC and CW affiliates.
This story will be updated as events progress.
