DIRECTV Lays Blackout Blame at Disney’s Feet, Outlining Tactics in New Website
Unbundledisney.com argues that Disney’s transition to streaming is hurting its linear viewers.
DIRECTV is serious about trying to deliver more choices for its customers. The satellite TV company is locked in a carriage dispute with Disney, which led to Disney-owned channels like ABC and ESPN to be pulled from DIRECTV satellite and streaming packages on Sunday, Sept. 1. Now, DIRECTV has established a new website, Unbundledisney.com, to make its case against the House of Mouse’s longstanding business practices.
Key Details:
- DIRECTV says Disney is forcing customers to pay for the same content twice by putting that content on streaming services.
- Disney has long forced DIRECTV and other carriers to bundle less-popular cable channels with more popular ones, creating bloated bundles.
- Disney says it will not agree to any deals that “undervalue” its TV channels.
On this website, DIRECTV argues that Disney’s tactics are putting the squeeze on customers. It says that by putting many of its best shows and movies on its on-demand streamers Disney+ and Hulu, Disney is forcing customers to pay for some content twice, and to subscribe to multiple platforms to get all of the content they want.
Since titles that air on Disney-owned linear channels also almost always appear on Hulu and/or Disney+, Disney is essentially monetizing those shows and movies twice, but in order to watch live news and sports programming, consumers can’t settle for just one, or even both, of Disney’s subscription streaming services.
“Programmers shift quality programming to their streaming services, forcing you to chase your favorites [sic] shows and sports,” DIRECTV said on the website.
It also raises the point that Disney forces viewers to pay for channels they probably won’t watch in order to get the more popular networks like ESPN. Before the carriage dispute officially began, DIRECTV chief content officer Rob Thun told me that his company was interested in creating smaller, genre-specific packages built around themes like sports, news, and kids programming to give customers more choices.
“Programmers like Disney want you to pay for all their networks even if you don’t want them,” DIRECTV wrote.
While those have been complaints from many in the traditional pay-TV industry for years, Unbundledisney.com also references the recent decision to shut down on-demand apps for channels like ABC and FX and migrate their content to Disney+ or Hulu. Since those channels are available via DIRECTV subscriptions, customers had previously been able to use their TV Everywhere credentials in order to stream on those apps. However, by shutting them down, DIRECTV argues that Disney is further limiting the viewing options for customers while attempting to charge them more money.
Among the list of other grievances on the website, DIRECTV says that airing the same events across multiple channels dilutes the value of the cable bundle, and cites the broadcasting of “Monday Night Football” simultaneously on ESPN and ABC as an example.
“Consumer frustration is at an all-time high as Disney shifts its best producers, most innovative shows, top teams, conferences, and entire leagues to their direct-to-consumer services while making customers pay more than once for the same programming on multiple Disney platforms,” Thun wrote in a blog post. “Disney’s only magic is forcing prices to go up while simultaneously making its content disappear.”
DIRECTV is offering customers who are affected by the outage of Disney-owned channels a $20 credit on their bill.
What is Disney’s Response to DIRECTV?
DIRECTV lays out a compelling argument as to why customers should put pressure on Disney to make a more equitable carriage deal, but of course, Disney does not see the case in the same light. Its hesitancy to allow DIRECTV to craft smaller channel packages that don’t include all of its channels is at least understandable since that has never been done in the history of pay TV.
“DIRECTV chose to deny millions of subscribers access to our content just as we head into the final week of the US Open and gear up for college football and the opening of the NFL season,” Disney executives Dana Walden, Alan Bergman, and Jimmy Pitaro said in a statement. “While we’re open to offering DIRECTV flexibility and terms which we’ve extended to other distributors, we will not enter into an agreement that undervalues our portfolio of television channels and programs.”
From its statement, it sounds as if Disney offered DIRECTV a deal that would have allowed it to provide its customers free access to on-demand Disney streaming services, similar to the agreement Disney made with Charter Communications last fall. But as Thun explained to me, that new benefit likely won’t be enough to satisfy DIRECTV, since its customers’ needs are so diverse. Viewers who sign up to DIRECTV to watch news or sports, won’t necessarily have any need for a kids streamer or a general entertainment hub, for instance.
The upcoming start of the 2024 NFL season could spur action on both sides to get a deal done —as it did between Disney and Charter a year ago — but there’s likely another few days left in the war of words between Disney and DIRECTV at the very least. Customers can head to Unbundledisney.com to check out DIRECTV’s positions in its carriage dispute with Disney.
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