Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Audio / Video

YouTube TV reaches deal with NBCUniversal, won’t lose channels

By

YouTube TV and NBCUniversal have reached a new carriage agreement and staved off the removal of 13 channels from what is believed to be the second-largest live TV streaming service in the United States. The resolution was announced a little more than a day after a short-term extension was granted.

Said NBCUniversal in an emailed statement:

Recommended Videos

We are thrilled to have reached a deal with YouTube TV and can continue to offer our full network portfolio, without interruption. YouTube is a valued partner and we never want to involve our fans in a dispute, but we felt obligated to let them know what was at stake. We thank our viewers for their loyalty and promise to continue bringing them the networks and programs they love.

Related

YouTube TV, for its part, also was “thrilled” in its email to subscribers.

We’re thrilled to share that we’ve reached a deal with NBCUniversal to continue carrying the full NBCUniversal portfolio of channels, including their Regional Sports Networks and your local NBC station. That means you won’t lose access to any of their channels, and YouTube TV will continue to offer 85+ networks for $64.99* per month.

‌We appreciate NBCUniversal’s willingness to work toward an agreement, and we also appreciate your patience while we negotiated with them on your behalf. Thanks again for being a YouTube TV member.

YouTube TV on an iPhone.
Phil Nickinson/Digital Trends

The two companies weren’t shy in letting customers know that the carriage deal, which gives YouTube TV the rights to carry NBCUniversal channels, was set to expire on September 30. YouTube TV did so with a fairly even-keeled blog post, while NBCUniversal ran on-screen crawls in all-capital letters and launched a website imploring YouTube TV customers to inundate customer service with demands that the suits find a way to make a deal and not lose channels. YouTube TV was clear that if no deal was reached and channels were removed, it would lower the price of its service by $10 a month to $55 until the channels returned.

At stake were NBC, Bravo, CNBC, E!, Golf Channel, MSNBC, Oxygen, SYFY, Telemundo, The Olympic Channel, Universal Kids, Universo, and USA Network.

YouTube TV parent company Google reported in October 2020 that the service had more than 3 million customers. It hasn’t updated those numbers since then, nor did it get any more specific as to the number of subscribers. Hulu With Live TV, which reports new subscriber numbers as part of parent company Disney’s quarterly earnings, most recently reported some 3.7 million paid subscribers as of July 3, 2021. Sling TV reported 2.44 million subscribers as of June 30, 2021.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Phil Nickinson
Phil Nickinson
Section Editor, Audio/Video
Phil spent the 2000s making newspapers with the Pensacola (Fla.) News Journal, the 2010s with Android Central and then the…
YouTube TV: plans, pricing, channels, how to cancel, and more
The YouTube TV on a Roku TV.

When you think of streaming video, you think YouTube. And so YouTube TV — Google's live TV streaming service — very much just makes sense for a lot of people. Designed for those who want to cut the cord and ditch their cable or satellite subscriptions (and known in the industry as a multichannel video programming distributor, or MPVD), YouTube TV competes in the same arena as other streaming television services like DirecTV Stream (formerly known as AT&T TV Now and DirecTV Now), Sling TV, FuboTV, and Hulu With Live TV.

And YouTube TV offers a unique mix of features that make it very appealing, so much so that it's now the No. 1 service in the U.S. in terms of the number of paid subscribers, with some 5 million subscribers as of June 2022 — up some 2 million from the last time the service gave an update in October 2020. The popularity is due to several factors. YouTube TV is easy to use. It's got a selection of channels that's competitive with all its rivals. And the YouTube TV price is competitive, too. You're able to watch YouTube TV on pretty much any modern device. And the fact that parent company Alphabet (aka Google) has been marketing the heck out of it the past few years certainly hasn't hurt, either.

Read more
NFL Sunday Ticket price looks to push more viewers toward YouTube TV
NFL on YouTube TV.

We're still months away from the next NFL season, but we now have pricing information on the next incarnation of NFL Sunday Ticket, the subscription that lets you watch all out-of-market games. The package has left DirecTV's satellite service and will now be available on YouTube and YouTube TV starting in August.

The option to sign up will be available "over the next few days," according to the official YouTube blog. And there's a $100 discount if you sign up by June 6, 2023.

Read more
YouTube gives iOS users another reason to pay for Premium
YouTube Premium on iPhone.

Subscription fatigue is real. But YouTube today just gave more reasons to pony up a few bucks every month for YouTube Premium, especially if you're on iOS. The big selling point for Premium, which costs $12 a month, is that you'll get rid of ads on your YouTube experience. That's worth it in and of itself. But you'll also get the ability to play videos in the background, download for offline viewing, and a subscription to YouTube Music Premium.

The new stuff adds on to all that.

Read more