Football games that are still in danger of being missed on ESPN networks this weekend despite AT&T and the Disney expansion
According to Ray Cole, AT&T and Disney extend talks about a carriage deal until 9 PM ET on Saturday morning, after an apparent deadline for midnight ET Friday night. AT&T-owned TV distributors include DirecTV, U-verse and AT&T Now.
As Cole notes that 9 AM ET time goes straight into the track of ESPN's hugely popular college football preview, College GameDay
10:45 CT update: negotiations continue into the night, and the parties have agreed to an extension until 9am in EDT tomorrow. It puts the new outlet right at the top of the start of @CollegeGameDay originating from Ames, IA. No joke. https://t.co/V6S3whmXsLebrit1[ads1]9659002??— Ray Cole (@raycoletv) September 14, 2019
And it's ahead of a day full of college football games at Disney-owned networks like ESPN, ESPN2, ABC , ESPNU, SEC Network and ACC Network.
ESPN blitzed AT&T viewers with bottom line ads and updates during Monday's Broncos-Raiders game as a warning of the AT&T truck conflict. The ads contained threats that suggested AT&T viewers might miss the upcoming Monday's Browns-Jets game, as well as Saturday's Florida-Kentucky football game.
DirecTV has also blocked ESPN's bottom line from time to time when the network mentions the vehicle conflict. This continued during Friday night's Houston-Washington State game, along with commercials that warned customers about ESPN potentially being pulled. When midnight ET followed, however, Disney-owned channels did not go dark (though the warnings remained), and we now know that it is because the sides agreed to a (very) short-term extension to continue negotiating.
midnight and ESPN have a good game early in the 4th quarter, but are still reporting that channels may soon go dark on DirecTV
– Ben Koo (@bkoo) September 14, 2019
I In addition, conferences have even been warned fans of the dispute. SEC tweeted this out Friday morning:
Attention @SEC fans!
If you are a DirecTV, AT&T U-Verse or AT&T TVNow subscriber, you may not be able to watch games on @SECNetwork (and others @ESPN and Disney network) this weekend.
Visit https://t.co/VG8i4nh0K0 for the latest information.
– Southeastern Conference (@SEC) September 13, 2019
If the pages can't come to an agreement, there will be many, many angry football fans and TV subscribers. Remember that just about every sports bar you go to in America has DirecTV as well.
It's hard to imagine it coming to that. If a new deal between the two sides is not reached before Saturday's game, it would appear likely that they will at least extend a negotiation window (again), rather than pulling Disney-owned channels a football weekend in September.
