fox business

About 10 million YouTube TV subscribers could lose access to Fox News and Fox Corp. channels that broadcast sports in a fee dispute that comes just days before the start of college football.

The Google-owned television service notified customers that Fox-owned channels, including Fox Business and local stations such as KTTV Channel 11 in Los Angeles, may be dropped from their program line-ups as soon as Wednesday afternoon if the two sides fail to reach a new distribution pact.

YouTube TV viewers would be without “The Five” and other Fox News programs. Sports fans could miss out on Friday night’s Auburn-Baylor football game and Saturday’s high-profile contest between Texas and Ohio State, along with three regional Major League Baseball games.

A prolonged blackout could interrupt the start of Fox’s NFL season that begins on Sept. 7.

“Fox is asking for payments that are far higher than what partners with comparable content offerings receive,” YouTube said late Monday in a blog post. “Our priority is to reach a deal that reflects the value of their content and is fair for both sides without passing on additional costs to our subscribers.”

The dust-up comes as YouTube TV has become one of the most formidable television providers.

Earlier this year, Nielsen ranked YouTube, including its video service, as the largest television distributor in the U.S. by share of viewership. YouTube’s popular bundle — it also offers the NFL Sunday Ticket package of out-of-market games — has dramatically cut into the business of legacy pay-TV providers, including Charter Spectrum, DirecTV and Dish Networks.

“While Fox remains committed to reaching a fair agreement with Google’s YouTube TV, we are disappointed that Google continually exploits its outsized influence by proposing terms that are out of step with the marketplace,” Fox said in a statement, adding the dispute could force its channels to go dark “unless Google engages in a meaningful way soon.”

Last year, YouTube generated $54.2 billion in revenue, second only to the Walt Disney Co., according to the MoffettNathanson research firm. The analysts estimated that fast-growing YouTube TV would reach 10 million subscribers this year. That slightly trails Charter, which operates the Spectrum service, and Comcast. YouTube TV has eclipsed the once powerhouse satellite TV service providers.

Disputes between programmers and pay-TV providers have become increasingly common in recent years amid a weakening of television economics. The high cost of sports rights has become a major rub for pay-TV distributors who have been asked to pay higher fees to mitigate the loss of subscribers.

Last year, DirecTV customers lost access to Walt Disney Co. channels, including ESPN, for nearly two weeks.

The battle was costly. DirecTV acknowledged that thousands of subscribers fled — many to YouTube TV — during the blackout. Viewers who wanted to watch the U.S. Open tennis tournament, college football, “Jeopardy!” and “Wheel of Fortune” were upset by the outage.

In 2023, a separate dispute led to Disney channels going dark on Spectrum.

YouTube said Monday that it was “working diligently with the team at Fox to reach an agreement.”

Should the channels go dark, the company will provide customers with a $10 credit. YouTube said customers could also sign up for Rupert Murdoch’s television company’s new streaming service, Fox One, which costs $20 a month.

The 2020 presidential election is history, but a legal dispute over Fox News’ reporting on President Trump’s false claims of voter fraud is heating up.

A motion for summary judgment by voting equipment company Smartmatic filed Tuesday in New York Supreme Court laid out in detail how phony allegations that it manipulated votes to swing the election to Joe Biden were amplified on Fox News.

The motion also described how the Fox News Media hosts who are defendants in the suit — the late Lou Dobbs, Jeanine Pirro and Maria Bartiromo of Fox Business — were allegedly committed to helping Trump prove his fraud theories so he could remain in office.

“I work so hard for the President and the party,” Pirro wrote in a text to Ronna McDaniel, then chair of the Republican National Committee.

Pirro left Fox News in May to become U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.

Smartmatic is suing Fox News for $2.7 billion in damages, claiming that the network’s airing of the false statements hurt the London-based company’s ability to expand its business in the U.S.

Fox News settled a similar suit from Dominion Voting Systems for $787.5 million in 2023.

The motion alleged that on-air hosts repeated the fraud claims even though executives and producers were told they were false.

The Fox News research department, known as the “Brainroom,” allegedly informed network producers that Smartmatic’s role in the 2020 election was limited to Los Angeles County and that the company’s software was not used in Dominion voting machines, another false claim made on the air.

Fox News maintains the network’s reporting on President Trump’s false claims were newsworthy and protected by the 1st Amendment. But part of the company’s legal strategy has been focused on minimizing the damage claims.

Fox News has asserted that any problems Smartmatic has experienced in attracting new business are rooted not in its reporting but in the federal investigation into the company’s activities with overseas governments.

Last year, Smartmatic’s founder, Roger Alejandro Piñate Martinez, and two other company officials were indicted by the U.S. attorney’s office and charged with bribing Philippine officials in order to get voting machine contracts in the country in 2016.

While the Trump camp’s assertions that the election was fixed were not believed throughout Fox News and parent company Fox Corp., the conservative-leaning network gave continued to give them oxygen to keep its audience tuned in, the motion alleged.

The motion described a “pivot” that occurred on Nov. 8, 2020, when then-Fox News Executive Chairman Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan asked Fox News Media Chief Executive Suzanne Scott to address the decline in the network’s ratings after Biden was declared the winner of the election. The network also looked at research to evaluate why viewers were leaving.

“The conclusion reached based on performance analytics: give the audience more election fraud,” the court document stated.

Such thinking, the filing said, permeated the company, already in a panic over losing viewers to right-leaning network Newsmax. The upstart outlet saw a ratings surge after Biden’s win due to its unwavering support of Trump’s claims.

“Think about how incredible our ratings would be if Fox went ALL in on STOP THE STEAL,” Fox News host Jesse Watters said in a text to his colleague Greg Gutfeld.

Throughout November and December 2020, the three hosts named in the suit, Dobbs, Pirro and Bartiromo, repeatedly featured Trump’s attorneys Rudolph Giuliani and Sidney Powell as guests. They spread the falsehoods that Smartmatic software was used in Dominion voting machines and altered millions of votes.

Smartmatic’s work in Los Angeles during the 2020 election was meant to be an entry point for the company to expand its domestic business. The company’s defamation suit claims that Fox News obliterated those efforts by presenting the false fraud claims.

But Fox News believes that issues with Smartmatic’s $282-million contract with Los Angeles County could help advance its case.

On Aug. 1, federal prosecutors filing a legal brief alleging that taxpayer funds from the county went into a slush fund held by a shell company to help pay for its illegal activities.

Federal prosecutors handling the case involving Smartmatic’s business in the Philippines said they plan to detail similar alleged schemes out of L.A. County and Venezuela to show that the bribery fits a larger pattern.

Fox News attorneys have filed a brief asking for county records that they believe will help bolster their case. The network is also expected to try to get the Smartmatic indictments in front of the court to raise doubts about the company’s reputation.

A Smartmatic representative said Fox News’ records request is a diversion tactic.

“Fox lies and when caught they lie again to distract,” a Smartmatic representative said in a statement. “Fox’s latest filing is just another attempt to divert attention from its long-standing campaign of falsehoods and defamation against Smartmatic.”

The company added that it abided with the law in Los Angeles County and “every jurisdiction where we operate.”

Smartmatic’s Tuesday court filing also included information that contradicted public statements Fox News made at the time.

The document alleged that Fox News fired political analyst Chris Stirewalt and longtime Washington bureau executives Bill Sammon for their involvement in calling the state of Arizona for Biden on election night. The early call of the close result in the state upset the Trump camp and alienated his supporters.

At the time, Fox News said Stirewalt departed as part of a reorganization and Sammon retired.

But the motion said Rupert Murdoch himself signed off on the decision to sever Stirewalt and Sammon from the company in an effort to assuage angry viewers who defected.

The motion cited a communication from Dana Perino, co-host of Fox News show “The Five,” describing a phone call with Stirewalt after his dismissal.

“I explained to him — you were right, you didn’t cave, and you got fired for doing the right thing,” Perino said.

Both Sammon and Stirewalt now work in the Washington bureau of NewsNation, the cable news network owned by Nexstar Media Group.