Charter Communications, which with just over 14.7 million customers is now within a couple hundred thousand cable TV connections of becoming the biggest U.S. pay TV provider of them all, is suddenly blacked out from the biggest channel of them all, ESPN, along with ABC O&Os and 24 other Disney cable networks.
Yeah, you heard this right -- on Thursday kickoff night for week 1 of the 2023 college football season, Charter set up a website, disneyespnfairdeal.com, to announce that it had to take down the Disney channels due to a carriage dispute.
At the time of this sentence typing, defending Pac-12 champ Utah is up 14-3 over perennial Southeast Conference contender Florida, live on ESPN, while starting a backup quarterback.
That's a big national game. And Charter subscribers are SOL.
"We offered Disney a fair deal, yet they are demanding an excessive increase," Charter said. "They also want to limit our ability to provide greater customer choice in programming packages forcing you to take and pay for channels you may not want. Spectrum is on your side and fighting to keep costs down while protecting and maximizing customer choice."
Updated: But this could be a line-in-the-sand moment for pay TV, with Disney openly declaring its intentions to take ESPN over-the-top. Charter conducted a virtual meeting with equity analysts and press Friday morning, whereby it declared -- after getting everyone up and working on holiday-getaway Friday -- that the kerfuffle is an opportunity to reinvent the broken pay TV bundle. See B+C's coverage here.
Here's Disney's statement: "We’ve been in ongoing negotiations with Charter Communications for some time and have not yet agreed to a new market-based agreement. As a result, their Spectrum TV subscribers no longer have access to our unrivaled portfolio of live sporting events and news coverage plus kids, family and general entertainment programming from the ABC Owned Television Stations, the ESPN networks, the Disney-branded channels, Freeform, the FX networks and the National Geographic channels. 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. 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."
Affected cable channels also include SEC Network, ACC Network, Longhorn Network, FX, FX Movie Channel, FXX, Freeform, National Geographic, Nat Geo Wild, Nat Geo Mundo, Disney Channel, Disney Junior, Disney XD, BabyTV.
ABC-owned stations in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Houston, Fresno and Raleigh-Durham were also taken down from Charter Spectrum.
Charter and Disney were working off a three-year deal that was signed in August 2019.
Fortunately for Utes fans in Salt Lake City, Comcast owns the cable franchise to the town. Gator diehards in Gainesville, meanwhile, pay their bills to Cox Communications if they take cable.
Also blacked out is North Dakota at Missouri on the SEC Network.
Notably, ESPN, which alone accounts for around $10 on the average pay TV bill, doesn't start its 2023 NFL participation until a Monday Night Football matchup on September 11 featuring the Buffalo Bills visiting the New York Jets.
The Charter-Disney kerfuffle is one of two major pay TV distribution beefs going on right now, with more than 200 stations owned or serviced by Nexstar Media Group blacked out on DirecTV platforms.
