A day after Disney chairman Bob Iger broke his silence on the ongoing dispute with YouTube TV with cautious optimism, another Disney executive took a much harder line on the negotiations.
Chief Financial Officer Hugh Johnston appeared Thursday on CNBC’s Squawk Box to discuss the content giant’s 4th quarter earnings call. He discussed Disney’s products, including their streaming platforms: Disney+ and the new ESPN direct-to-consumer app, as well as park performances before the questions turned to the current carriage fee negotiations with YouTube TV. Co-host Becky Quick asked Johnston if he believed a theory posited by CNBC founder Tom Rogers that the dispute shows “some of the problems with legacy broadcasting and how the power has really been diluted.”
“No, I think that’s an exaggeration,” Johnston retorted. “With all due respect to Tom, I know he founded CNBC, but I do think that’s an exaggeration and a bit more than a reality. We’re in the middle of negotiations right now. Things are live. They’re happening. Obviously as we entered the year, we knew this was going to be a challenging battle, and we’ve prepared ourselves for it. We’re ready to go as long as they want to.”
Watch Disney CFO Hugh Johnston’s Take On The YouTube TV Dispute
The last sentence should give subscribers of YouTube TV who thought there might be a quick resolution to the matter pause. Because it certainly appears that there are at least some executives that feel Disney should dig in their collective heels.
The question becomes: just how long can Disney hold out? According to Morgan Stanley, the content giant is losing $4.3 million a day in the standoff with YouTube TV, some $30 million per week as the stalemate now advances into its third weekend. Meanwhile, Alphabet, the parent company of Google and YouTube, has a worth measured in the trillions of dollars. It’s interesting to see if Disney is able to catch enough unhappy subscribers in order to make the stalemate worthwhile to shareholders, who will eventually start feeling the pain of lower stock prices.
Disney’s content was pulled from YouTube TV October 31.
