New Year's Eve Blackout Of Disney Channels, ESPN Possible, Verizon Warns FiOS Customers

Verizon is alerting its FiOS TV customers that they may experience an outage of ESPN and Disney Channels if the company cannot reach a new carriage agreement with the Walt Disney Co.

Valerie Musson

12/29/2018 6:30 a.m.

Freeform and WABC in New York would also go dark if any agreement is not reached.

This is just the latest chapter of the ongoing fight between media companies about carrying and paying for content. If the parties can’t reach a deal, Disney’s channels could go out for Fios customers starting at 5 p.m. on New Year’s Eve.

Though Verizon’s Fios reached approximately 4.6 million subscribers at the end of last year, it lost about 63,000 video subscriptions in the third quarter of 2018, which the company says was “impacted by ongoing shifts away from linear video offerings.” For now, Fios customers will just have to wait and see how the negotiations play out.

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