TelevisaUnivision Goes Public With YouTube TV Carriage Fight, “Discriminatory” Tactics

YouTube TV finds itself in middle of another significant carriage fight, but unlike last month’s dispute with Fox Corp. around fees (which ultimately was resolved with a deal) the new dispute is about something different: Channel tiers, packaging and accessibility.

TelevisaUnivision on Tuesday went public with an ad campaign calling out YouTube TV for the dispute, which will see the core Univision broadcast network pulled from the service’s base tier and moved to a Spanish-language add-on tier beginning Sep. 30.

“Google’s proposal to remove Univision from its core offering on YouTube TV and charge its customers 18% more to access the leader in Spanish-language broadcasting is discriminatory and an abuse of its market power,” a TelevisaUnivision spokesperson says. “Alongside the major English-language networks, Univision is an essential part of the American mainstream. Univision is of critical importance to millions of Hispanic Americans, something that has been recognized by every single major content distributor – except Google. Univision is not niche – it moves America.“

YouTube, for its part, disputes that, saying that if the companies can’t reach a deal by Sep. 30, the Univision channels will leave the platform altogether.

“TelevisaUnivision’s demands aren’t supported by their performance on YouTube TV over the last four years,” a YouTube spokesperson says. “If we cannot reach a fair deal by September 30th, their programming will no longer be available on YouTube TV. Our carriage decisions are based on viewer consumption and pricing, and any suggestion to the contrary is false.”

Typically, carriage disputes are about some combination of money and accessibility. After all, every channel owner wants as much cash as possible, and as many subscribers as possible. However, distributors have been moving toward more package offerings, trying to slim down core bundles, with more customizable add-ons and tweaks.

Univision is a major broadcast network, but it is also a Spanish-language network, which underscores the complicated moves at play. In order to subscribe to the Spanish-language tier, YouTube TV subscribers need a base tier first. This effectively raises the cost to get Univision, while also limiting its access to a subsection of subscribers. Of course, Spanish language programming (including from TelevisaUnivision) is easily accessible on the main, free YouTube platform, though that does not include the linear channels at the heart of the dispute.

In the ad spot, Univision calls the move a “Hispanic tax,” and references YouTube owner Google’s original “don’t be evil” mantra by urging the distributor to “do the right thing, otherwise, this looks evil.”

Distributors, of course, are working to segment every niche offering, and splitting Spanish-language from English is a move that has been discussed for some time. TelevisaUnivision, however, is helped by the fact that its recent deals, including with Hulu with Live TV and DirecTV, keep Univision in the core bundle.