{"id":264417,"date":"2025-11-06T00:14:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-06T00:14:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/264417\/"},"modified":"2025-11-06T00:14:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T00:14:09","slug":"sinclair-ceo-rips-disney-over-abc-blackout-for-youtube-tv-users","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/264417\/","title":{"rendered":"Sinclair CEO Rips Disney Over ABC Blackout for YouTube TV Users"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tChris Ripley, the CEO of Sinclair<\/a> Broadcast Group, is tired of blackouts \u2014 specifically, the one currently keeping<\/a> ABC<\/a> programming from about 10 million YouTube TV<\/a> subscribers. It is such a problem for him that, on a Wednesday conference call tied to his company\u2019s summer 2025 earnings quarter, Ripley didn\u2019t even talk about the <\/a>Jimmy Kimmel Live! suspension<\/a> he helped shepherd in September.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe, as local broadcasters, have no say in whether our content and the content we pay to air will be distributed to local viewers,\u201d Ripley said. \u201cThis was clearly not the intent of the Communications Act, and seems to be, from our perspective, an antitrust issue as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tConsidering the Communications Act was written in 1934 to regulate interstate and foreign wire and radio communications, no, this clearly was not its intent. The act formed the FCC, the government agency that regulates broadcast TV networks, like Disney<\/a>\u2019s ABC.<\/p>\n

\n\tThese regular disputes over carriage fees (YouTube TV just got out of one with NBCUniversal<\/a>) and sometimes the subsequent channel(s) blackouts \u201ccontinue to hurt local viewers and \u2026 the ecosystem of local journalism,\u201d Ripley continued. <\/p>\n

\n\tRipley believes his local ABC affiliates should still have their content, primarily news and sports, carried through to YouTube TV subscribers, regardless of Disney\u2019s position. Or at least, maybe ask first? To that end, Ripley says he has spoken with both the SEC and antitrust regulators, and the FCC has \u201copened an investigation into hurtful network affiliation practices.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDisney\/ABC and other networks should not be able to dictate to us whether we can or cannot distribute content to YouTube TV or even Hulu and Fubo, which, coincidentally are now also owned by Disney<\/a>,\u201d Ripley said. \u201cParticularly concerning is that consumers are now being forced to buy more streaming services from one of the parties in the dispute to get the content that they literally already paid for.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chris Ripley, the CEO of Sinclair Broadcast Group, is tired of blackouts \u2014 specifically, the one currently keeping…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":264418,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[2086,49,48,3494,75,85148,348,45760],"class_list":{"0":"post-264417","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-abc","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-disney","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-sinclair","14":"tag-tv","15":"tag-youtube-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264417\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/264418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}