On the one hand, $20—which Google previously promised users if a previously unnamed amount of time, now revealed to be “about a week and change” had passed—isn’t that much, given that a monthly YouTube TV subscription currently runs users $82.99 a month. On the other hand, the service reportedly has more than 9 million subscribers, and $180 million in lost revenue isn’t exactly chump change, suggesting Google knows it’s dealing with increasingly disgruntled cordcutters who just want their Dancing With The Stars back.
The fight between Google and Disney is, as observers have noted, basically just a 2020s evolution of the old carriage battles that used to happen between networks and cable providers all the time, rooted in arguments about how much two businesses that ostensibly need each other—studios on the one hand, and the companies that feed their content directly to the masses on the other—should charge each other for the privilege of doing business. Among other things, both sides have blamed the other for the ongoing blackout, with Google claiming that Disney is deliberately drawing things out at least in part to drive users toward its own streaming offerings, while Disney claims Google is attempting to screw it over by trying to pay below-market rates owing to its hefty install base. (The service, currently available only in the United States, is one of the biggest pay-TV services in the country, with subscriber numbers competitive with old-school cable companies like Spectrum and Xfinity, despite being less than a decade old.)
The $20 credits should go into effect by November 12. Google hasn’t publicly discussed yet what it’ll do to assuage customer fears if the blackout continues even further than this first financial precipice.
