Disney Headlines for November 4th, 2025

Four months ago, The Walt Disney Company had completely righted the ship.

CEO Bob Iger had fulfilled his promise and restored the company to its prior greatness.

Disney excelled during the second half of 2024 and the first half of 2025.

Alas, every hot streak eventually comes to an end, and that’s the case here.

Lately, the Mouse House cannot avoid brouhahas, with the latest one dominating the news.

So, in this week’s Disney Headlines, I’ll explain why YouTube/Google is feuding with Disney.

What Now?

Long story short, Disney channels went dark on YouTube TV on Halloween.

How did we reach yet another ridiculous showdown between Disney and a cable carrier?

This latest piece of drama has been inevitable for a while, but the timing is rough for the Mouse.

With Disney still recovering from the last media debacle at the end of September, Iger hoped for a breather.

Alas, media analysts understood why this was unlikely to happen, as a ticking time bomb finally exploded.

MickeyBlog warned you this was coming back in May, when a former ESPN executive defected.

Justin Connolly, who had worked at Disney for more than 20 years, was harboring a grudge.

Iger passed over the executive for an all-important role: the leader of ESPN.

Disney brought over Jimmy Pitaro from a different division and put him in charge of the Worldwide Leader.

Connolly found himself in the unenviable position of helping to train Pitaro as his new boss.

Early in 2025, Google, the owner of YouTube and YouTube TV, discovered that Connolly was unhappy.

Google pitched him an offer to leave Disney and become a part of YouTube TV.

That’s a bold move in general, but it was particularly noteworthy here. Connolly was under contract with Disney.

Also, everyone involved with the drama quickly grasped Google’s angle with this move.

Since Connolly knew Disney’s cable business better than anyone, including Pitaro, he could help Google.

YouTube TV and Disney were about to engage in negotiations for a carriage renewal.

That’s industry jargon for Google paying Disney to keep its television channels on YouTube TV.

These negotiations are high-stakes affairs, ones Disney rarely loses. See: the Charter fiasco.

The Ace in the Hole

That incident occurred two years ago, and they often happen in the Fall.

Disney specifically times its renegotiations so that the deals end during football season.

Since Disney controls countless college football games, cable carriers don’t want to lose this content.

Should Disney go dark during the season, fans lose the ability to watch the games.

For instance, let’s say you are a University of Tennessee fan, and you want to watch the Oklahoma game.

By you, I mean me, and that’s exactly what happened to me on Saturday. Yes, I’m a YouTube TV subscriber.

Since Disney went dark on YouTube TV on Halloween, I couldn’t watch the game happening 15 minutes from my house.

That’s the madness of modern sports licensing, with Disney at the forefront of the chaos.

With linear television in a persistent state of decline, every dollar counts.

That statement applies to Disney, the business licensing the content, and Google, the one buying it.

Google acquires the rights to broadcast channels like ABC, Freeform, and ESPN for a set period of time.

Then, when that contract approaches its end date, the parties squabble over money.

Google anticipated this week’s fight back in May. That’s why it poached Connolly.

For its part, Disney sued to enforce the employee’s contract. That…didn’t go well.

However, the two parties settling the lawsuit seemed like a good sign that maybe a truce was coming.

Truce? Ha!

Alas, that didn’t happen, and Google even acted a bit petulantly right before the buzzer.

Rather than leaving the Disney channels on until midnight, YouTube TV cut them off at 11:15 p.m.

Why does that matter? Jimmy Kimmel Live aired at 11:30 p.m., and it lost viewers because of this.

Frankly, that’s just mean of Google, and Disney understandably sounded annoyed by it.

So, the parties went from agreeing to drop the Connolly lawsuit to acting acrimoniously the following day.

Not surprisingly, the parties failed to come to an agreement in time for YouTube TV to air college football.

This is the third time Disney has squared off against a cable carrier recently, but this one’s a bit different.

Historically, Disney had the upper hand in negotiations with people trying to license its content.

As you might expect, Google doesn’t need to fold here, as YouTube TV is just a side venture.

This project means as much to them as, say, FuboTV does to Disney.

If tens of thousands of customers cancel YouTube TV, Google doesn’t care. It still has search.

Also, YouTube is the company’s true revenue stream, just as Disney+ and Hulu matter more to Disney.

However, Disney sorely needs the carriage fees that Google pays for ABC, Freeform, ESPN, and so forth.

Ergo, this relationship works differently than all of Disney’s other carriage fee negotiations.

Google can make Disney sweat in a way that nobody else can, which is what makes this blackout so interesting.

Ordinarily, Disney lets the other company sweat through a public pressure campaign.

YouTube just may not care in the short term, as Connolly possesses inside information about Disney’s comfort level.

Why This Matter Isn’t Easily Settled

The former ESPN exec knows how much Disney can tolerate before the blackout starts to impact its bottom line.

And that’s the pressing topic here. Disney will host an earnings call next week.

That conversation should prove contentious due to the events of the summer and October/November.

Now, Disney faces another uprising against a powerful opponent.

Still, I don’t think that the company is too worried about the current blackout.

I say this because the FuboTV acquisition has been completed, with the service merging with Hulu + Live TV.

In addition, with ESPN’s app up and running, Disney can monetize this crisis.

Ostensibly, hundreds of thousands of customers may be trying these services as we speak.

The YouTube TV customers like me have weighed options about replacements.

Disney happens to operate two of the best ones, which is what makes all this so fascinating.

This particular fight plays out much differently than the Charter one and others like it.

So, we probably won’t know who actually won the scuffle for a while, although one outcome is predictable.

Part of the reason why YouTube TV is pushing back so hard is to gain a benefit.

When ESPN debuted as an app, some cable vendors automatically added it for free.

 

So, the subscribers to those services immediately gained access to the app.

YouTube TV subscribers still don’t have that, and Google wants to acquire those rights.

That’s yet another reason why these negotiations are unlike any others Disney has had recently.

There’s a chance that this matter could be settled by the time you read this.

However, I’m braced for this impasse to last longer than the others.

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Feature Photo: Disney+