With television growing into one of the largest performance media
channels, can a network like Fox afford to go dark on Google's YouTube TV platform?
Fox may find out. Google-owned YouTube on Monday said it may remove channels including Fox
Broadcast Network, Fox News and Fox Sports from its TV streaming platform if it doesn’t reach an agreement with its parent company.
Wednesday is Fox's renewal date, but the companies
have been unable to reach an agreement.
"Fox is asking for payments that are far higher than what partners with comparable content offerings receive," the YouTube TV team wrote 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."
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YouTube TV as a performance
media channel is based on advertising options, targeting features and audience tools, as well as the ability to measure outcomes and brand awareness, the company said.
With Google behind
the platform, YouTube TV continually receives updates.
In June, the platform gained improvements in its Multiview feature, which launched in 2023.
The feature was first deployed to
sports fans to track multiple games simultaneously, and has since been expanded to non-sports channels.
It now allows subscribers to watch up to four custom channels
simultaneously.
As part of a performance media play, Multiview offers smart recommendations, which analyzes the channel a user watches and suggests Multiview combinations to
fit the user's preferences. The data can be used to target the viewer ads based on viewing history.
Last year, YouTube TV was forecast to become the top pay TV distributor by the
end of 2026, Forbes reported, citing a forecast from MoffettNathanson, a Wall Street research company that covers media and communications.
The forecast was based on YouTube continuing to
increase its subscriber counts, which it did.
YouTube TV had more than 8 million subscribers in February 2024, according to Google.
By April 2025, the service had grown to more
than 9.4 million subscribers, according to an analyst at MoffettNathanson.