Fox Corp. and virtual MVPD YouTube TV on Thursday reached a carriage deal, keeping the programmer’s channels on the streaming pay TV provider’s service and avoiding a channel blackout just before the start of pro and college football season.
The carriage renewal includes the full portfolio of Fox networks including Fox News, Fox Business, Fox Weather, Fox Sports, FS1, FS2, Fox Deportes, Big Ten Network, Fox broadcast network and all Fox local stations.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Fox and Google-owned YouTube TV went public with their spat earlier this week amid negotiations for a renewed agreement. In somewhat typical back-and-forth during carriage disputes, Fox took issue with YouTube TV’s terms and warned viewers they could soon lose access to Fox channels including news and sports, while YouTube TV, for its part, claimed Fox was seeking above-market carriage rates.
And while the FCC does not have authority over virtual MVPDs like YouTube TV, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr weighed in on social media this week, suggesting the burden of reaching an agreement sat with YouTube. On X, Carr said millions of Americans were relying on YouTube to resolve the situation and urged Google to “get a deal done.”
While pay TV continues to struggle, YouTube TV has grown into a leading provider. The service, which offers a cable-like TV channel lineup delivered via streaming, doesn’t regularly provide subscriber updates but April estimates from MoffettNathanson pegged YouTube TV’s base around 9.4 million. That estimate means the vMVPD is not too far off from Charter, the country’s largest pay TV provider, which as of Q2 had a residential video customer base of about 12.1 million.