C-SPAN announces deal for its service to be carried on YouTube TV, Hulu

 

NEW YORK (AP) — C-SPAN announced Wednesday that it has reached agreements to carry its three channels on YouTube TV and Hulu + Live TV, resolving a standoff that had squeezed the public affairs network’s revenue in the era of cord-cutting.

Under the deal, the streaming services will pay the same rate as cable and satellite providers — about 87 cents per subscriber annually — while C-SPAN maintains its long-standing policy of running no advertising on television.

Congress weighed in earlier this year, passing a resolution urging the parent companies — Alphabet for YouTube and Disney for Hulu — to add C-SPAN to their lineups. Lawmakers were motivated in part by the loss of airtime for congressional sessions and hearings, which make up a large portion of the network’s programming.

A decade ago, C-SPAN reached around 100 million U.S. homes through traditional television. That number has since fallen to about 70 million, with some 20 million of those now relying on streaming bundles like YouTube TV and Hulu, which until now had excluded the network.