Sunday’s Emmy Awards will take place nearly two weeks after 16 Disney networks went dark on DirecTV due to a carriage dispute between the companies.
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Barring a resolution before the show, the unavailability of ABC for 11 million DirecTV subscribers (a healthy number of them in the L.A. market) will come at an inopportune time for Disney. The media giant is not just broadcasting this year’s Emmys; its shows, notably FX’s The Bear and Shōgun , are poised to take many of the night’s biggest trophies. FXX, one of the other networks affected by the blackout, is also airing an edited telecast of last weekend’s Creative Arts Emmys, which Disney dominated with a r e c o r d 51 wins , on Saturday night.
Streaming isn’t a workaround as it would be for the other broadcast networks in the Emmy rotation. Disney-owned Hulu will not air the Emmys live but instead will make the show available the next day on demand.
Certainly, far bigger ratings draws than the Emmys – namely, NFL and college football as well as the presidential debate – have come and gone in recent days without prompting a contract renewal. Yet, an ego-driven affair like a major awards show being MIA for a large chunk of its hometown and industry audience could well inject a new sense of urgency into the talks.
Sources familiar with the negotiations told Deadline on Friday afternoon that active discussions are continuing. Both sides have pointed DirecTV subscribers to alternative pay-TV providers as an interim fix. DirecTV even offered a $30 credit for those signing up to rivals Sling TV or Fubo. Appearing Thursday at a Goldman Sachs conference, DirecTV Chief Marketing Officer Vince Torres acknowledged that the company has seen some customer defections. While he declined to give specific figures, he said it is “not an immaterial amount of customers because any time you have something like this the annoyance factor is very high.”
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The sides have essentially agreed on rate increases for the renewal of their just-expired 5-year deal. The main obstacle to an agreement to end the standoff is the specific framework to be used in creating smaller, cheaper bundles for consumers. DirecTV and other pay-TV operators have complained that Disney and other programmers effectively impose higher prices on customers because they insist on carriage for a raft of less-viewed networks, making bundles overstuffed and expensive. Disney has pushed back on DirecTV’s characterization that it is unwilling to consider smaller bundles and has said that the distributor has “failed to meaningfully engage” with proposals to that effect.
Unlike rivals like Charter Communications or Comcast, satellite players like DirecTV do not sell broadband, making the fight more existential. Charter on Thursday announced an early carriage renewal with Warner Bros. Discovery that included the integration of streaming flagship Max on Charter’s Spectrum cable and broadband video packages. Disney and Charter reached a similar deal to end a 10-day blackout in September 2023.
As the carriage impasse continues, Disney is also pursuing some consequential streaming initiatives. It teamed up with Fox and WBD on Venu Sports, a joint venture whose planned launch last month was blocked by a federal judge on antitrust grounds. With the future of Venu in doubt, Disney’s ESPN subsidiary is nonetheless moving ahead with the launch of its stand-alone streaming version in late-summer 2025. At a recent press event, ESPN Chairman Jimmy Pitaro said it has been “all hands on deck” to stand up that service, which is seen as a crucial means of future-proofing ESPN’s business as cord-cutting keeps eroding its traditional base of viewers.
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