YouTube TV Regains TelevisaUnivision Channels After 2 Month Standoff

Looks like YouTube TV is feeling generous. After resolving a bitter 2-week fight with Disney, the service also made up with TelevisaUnivision.

The deal restores Univision, Unimás, TUDN, and Galavisión for YouTube TV customers. Univision was the 9th most-watched TV channel in the U.S. last year. Unimás ranked 29th.

ViX is also available in the YouTube store once again.

Carriage fights have become a regular annoyance for live TV subscribers. The services are trying to fight back against entertainment companies that are pulling viewers away to their own standalone streamers. The big trend now is ingestion. Live TV providers don’t mind that standalone streamers exist, but they want to offer all the content within their ecosystem as well.

Ingestion is easy when you have a situation like Fubo and ESPN Unlimited, both owned by the same company. Disney doesn’t care how you subscribe – they get the revenue either way.

But YouTube TV is understandably upset if viewers are leaving them because all (or most) TelevisaUnivision is available on ViX.

Over time, we’ve seen content creep away from linear channels to standalone streamers. And now we’re seeing those streamers offering things that were previously only available with their linear counterparts, like when HBO Max began including sports from TNT and TBS.

Year-by-year, the audience for live TV continues to shrink. As viewers flock to cheaper on-demand alternatives, live TV is only propped up by sports (mostly the NFL and NCAA Football), and older viewers who watch news. Ingesting streming-exclusive content won’t stop the decay of that audience, but it could slow the pace a bit.