North Dakota Direct TV Viewers Just Lost A Very Popular Channel

North Dakota Direct TV viewers were greeted with a very unwelcome announcement.

As of Sunday, September 1st, several popular channels have just gone dark for North Dakota Direct TV viewers and it couldn't have happened at a worse time if you are a football fan like myself.

According to AXIOS, Disney has pulled all of its networks from Direct TV, which includes ESPN!

The channels affected include one of the 3 major networks, ABC.  Also, gone dark from Direct TV's lineup from Disney includes, ESPN and all of its secondary channels, FX, FXM, Disney branded channels, A & E, Lifetime, The History Channel, and several others.

Here's the message you will get if you try to click on one of these channels if you are a Direct TV North Dakota subscriber.

That's a lot of channels I watch. YIKES!  As of Monday, September 2nd, our local ABC channel was still available on Direct TV in Bismarck, but that may be changing soon.

As I mentioned, this couldn't have come at a worse time for Direct TV's football fans.  Not only will you lose a lot of big-time college football games on ESPN, but ESPN is the exclusive home to Monday Night Football.

Why is Disney doing this to Direct TV?

They are using this as leverage to work out a better deal with Direct TV because their contract has expired.  According to the article, Disney wants Direct TV to absorb some of the increasing costs of live sports especially.

How long can you expect this blackout to last for Direct TV?

That's hard to say, typically these types of feuds are settled in a couple of weeks, but just look at the battle that Midco had with Bally Sports North, which kept the Twins off of cable for most of the summer.

Let's hope it's closer to weeks instead of months.  As usual, as these companies get richer from each other, the consumer pays for it.