Disney networks, including ESPN, pulled from DIRECTV

For the second-straight year , the start of football season has coincided with the ESPN networks being dropped from one of the nation’s top distributors.

Disney-owned channels, including ESPN and some ABC stations, were dropped from DIRECTV Sunday following the expiration of the sides’ carriage agreement. The agreement expired at 5 PM ET, but the channels remained on DIRECTV for about two hours afterward as negotiations continued. The Disney channels went dark just as ABC was set to broadcast its annual Labor Day weekend Sunday night college football game, which this year pits USC against LSU.

Not long after the channels went dark around 7 PM ET, Disney released a statement saying that it will not agree to any deal that “undervalues [its] portfolio of television channels and programs.”

The Disney-DIRECTV negotiations have occurred at a particularly contentious moment in the programmer/distributor relationship. Disney, along with Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox Corporation, attempted to launch a new joint venture streaming service this year that drew the ire of distributors for only including sports networks. (Distributors, by contrast, are required to bundle low-wattage channels such as Freeform and FXX with the more popular sports channels). That effort, which was to launch last week, was at least temporarily scuttled in court .

A year ago, the Disney-owned channels were pulled from Charter on the opening Thursday of the college football season, a conflict that was viewed at the time as potentially existential for the cable provider . After several days of saber-rattling, the sides reached a deal in time for ESPN/ABC’s first Monday Night Football game of the season.

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