Fresh off resolving its carriage dispute with Fox, YouTube TV is now in a battle with TelevisaUnivision.
The Hispanic media giant has gone live with spots warning its customers that the Google-owned platform is attempting to remove Univision from its core line-up and move it to a Spanish-only add-on package. It argued the move would force millions of Hispanic households to pay 18% more for its local news, live sports and entertainment content.
TelevisaUnivision called Google’s proposal an 18% “Hispanic Tax,” and slammed it as “discriminatory” and an “abuse of its market power.”
“Alongside the major English-language networks, Univision is an essential part of the American mainstream,” a TelevisaUnivision spokesperson told TheWrap. “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.”
A YouTube TV spokesperson told TheWrap that it is working to reach an equitable agreement with TelevisaUnivision, but argued its demands “aren’t supported by their performance” on the platform over the last four years.
“If we cannot reach a fair deal by September 30th, their programming will no longer be available on YouTube TV,” the spokesperson added. “Our carriage decisions are based on viewer consumption and pricing, and any suggestion to the contrary is false.”
If the two sides are unable to reach a deal, users can subscribe to TelevisaUnivision’s ViX streaming service. Its content is also available on YouTube’s main platform, where they have more than 10 million subscribers. On average, there were over 9 billion views of Spanish language content daily on the main YouTube app globally in June.
YouTube TV also offers news content through its recent renewal with Fox and new agreements with C-SPAN and OANN.
