Disney vs. YouTube TV: When Giants Fight, Viewers Lose

Disney, YouTube TV and the power of giants Disney, YouTube TV settling their fight isn't just about getting Monday Night Football back. It's a reminder of how concentrated power in media and tech really is. According to the New York times, Disney and YouTube TV ended a 15 day blackout with a multi year deal that restores ESPN, ABC and other Disney channels, plus gives YouTube TV subscribers ESPN's new streaming service at no extra cost. Behind that truce is a simple fact. Disney, worth around $190 billion, was negotiating with Alphabet, YouTube's parent, which is pushing $3 trillion in market value. So talk about David and Goliath. On paper, this is a private contract dispute over carriage fees and who pays the exploding sports rights bills. In practice, it's a case study and bargaining power. A dominant tech platform that controls distribution, data and ads can squeeze traditional media and leave viewers as hostages in the middle for people who want tougher antitrust enforcement. This is exactly the kind of standoff that argues for rules limiting how much leverage one or two giant gatekeepers can have over what the country sees and pays. And remember, Disney itself has been accused of using ESPN to force higher prices on the entire live TV TV market. Okay, so what's the real message here? Disney is a huge, gigantic media conglomerate that's been around forever. And Alphabet, owner of Google, owner of YouTube, is even bigger media. So it's the giant versus the super, super, super giant. It's hard to know who to root for or root against when it feels more natural to root against both of them. I do think that as much as Disney's done a lot of interesting things in the past, shall we say, they're the real David here. They're the small time player. And we as a society have to somehow vote for politicians who are willing to stand up to these huge giant technology platforms because they are getting so powerful and there's so few of them that they can really do whatever they want. Now, I personally don't like espn. I always hated having to pay for it back when I subscribed to cable. And I'm glad I figured out a way mostly to not have to pay for that. But let's face it, a lot of people do. And in America, people love watching football. And at some point, if either Google gets bigger or Apple gets bigger, or Amazon gets bigger, or Facebook, one of those four get a little bit bigger or maybe even gobble up the other two, they could maybe charge $1,000 an NFL game to watch on your own TV if they wanted to because there's so little Competition. Now all the big tech companies say, what are you talking about? TikTok's competition, everyone's competition. It was the Disney people back 35 years ago, before the Internet. They're the ones who had it good. They're the ones who had the monopoly. We're just these little players out here. It's not the biggest technology companies are getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and someone like Amazon can just throw money around in Hollywood and completely improve and change the industry positively, but also decimate it like that if they want to because it's so big. And Facebook could as well. Now Facebook doesn't really have a, any kind of a traditional media company as far as a Paramount or a Warner Brothers in their portfolio. And I can't imagine they'd want it. But they're still so big, they dominate what's really important in the media world, which is advertising, which means they can charge almost whatever they want. So look, if you subscribe to YouTube or Disney and you got what you want, that's great. But realize all of us have to be more aggressive at not putting our eggs in one basket trying to diffuse. I mean, I remind myself this, I should stop continually buying Apple products. Even though I'm staring at my iPhone right now, even though my teleprompter is running on an iPhone, even though to check the beginning and the end of the show, I'm looking at my iWatch. I feel bad about getting so much power to one company because ultimately that much power breeds arrogance and it breeds the ability to charge whatever you want and really abuse customers and clients and advertisers and everyone. So the ultimate solution is you and I are going to have to vote for politicians who take antitrust seriously. And I'm not leading some partisan rant here. You can give a lot of criticism to the Obama administration and the Biden administration for not forcing antitrust in a more serious way. The way Facebook has been allowed to not really compete anymore. Someone looks like a competitor, like Instagram. Let's snap it up. WhatsApp looks like competition. Let's snap it up. Amazon says, wow, these diapers people. Diapers.com is doing really well. Let's just drive them out of business over it. Doesn't have to be that way. Unfortunately, our regulators bought into this myth that as long as short term customers don't see their prices going up all as well. Neglecting the fact that in the long term, if a huge dominant company like Amazon or Facebook buys up all competition obliterates all competition, they can then charge whatever we want. All of us are handy. So I am not particularly happy, frankly, with either party. Which is yet another reminder. I'm here as a sane, sensible century, and I'm giving it to you straight, regardless of what party may or may not be helped or hurt. So again, to summarize the key facts of this story, Disney's already faced an antitrust suit over allegedly tying ESPN into live TV bundles at inflated prices. So it's kind of like, oh, you want this show? You got to buy all this sports stuff that you don't like. It's not really fair. The new deal restores channels and bundles to ESPN's flagship streaming app, free on YouTube TV. Do you use YouTube TV? That's a different question than have you ever watched YouTube on your TV? It's a, it's a paid subscription service. Let me know. I would love to hear from you.