Disney and Charter are still talking about a new transportation agreement

Disney and Charter are still discussing a new multi-year distribution agreement, exceeding the deadline set for Friday at midnight, as the two sides continue to work to reach an agreement, according to people close to the record. .

The parties are progressing in an agreement and want to avoid a network failure of popular networks such as ESPN, ABC and The Disney Channel, said the people, who asked not to be named because the discussions are private.

Discussions between pay-TV providers and content providers have become more complicated this year, as major programmers, including Disney, AT & T's WarnerMedia and CBS, seek to divide their content between their networks. linear and their tailor-made streaming services.

Earlier this month, AT & T and CBS failed to reach a new deal, resulting in the loss of millions of DirecTV subscribers to the CBS broadcast network. CBS has acknowledged seeing an increase in the number of subscribers to its CBS All Access streaming product, which broadcasts most of its programming for $ 5.99 per month since the outage.

The main blocking points between Charter and Disney were the problems with ESPN, the most expensive pay-TV network, said the people. One of the issues is ESPN's proposed pricing for the ACC network, a new cable channel that will broadcast college sports for teams participating in the conference, including Clemson, Duke and the University of North Carolina. The ACC network is scheduled to broadcast the Clemson opening match against Georgia Tech on August 29th. Clemson won the national university football championship last year. About forty percent of the footprint of the Charter overlaps with that of the ACC schools.

The spokespersons of the Charter and Disney declined to comment.

Another hurdle is the leeway that Charter is ready to offer to ESPN +, Disney's $ 4.99 per month streaming product. Both parties are discussing the possibility of including ESPN + as a new network that Charter consumers can access on their set-top boxes, people said.

Disney plans to bundle ESPN + with Hulu and Disney + when it launches in November and wants to boost the sports streaming service without sacrificing the value of ESPN, which costs about $ 10 per pay-TV subscriber. In general, Disney will require cable operators to distribute ESPN at least 80% of the footprint of their subscribers, according to those familiar with the subject.

While pay-TV companies such as Viacom have lost their weight in the distribution fee negotiations, much of its valuable Nickelodeon and Comedy Central programming is available on streaming services such as Amazon Prime and Hulu, Disney is still asking for higher rates for ESPN and its badociated networks. networks because of the value of live sports, said the people. Disney has not made ESPN available as a streaming option, thus retaining its exclusive value within the pay TV offering.

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