"Unfortunately, we are headed into another sports-packed weekend without a deal in place," Disney executives wrote in a memo on Friday.

Disney said on Friday it is continuing talks with Google's YouTube TV to restore ABC and ESPN after its networks went dark on the pay-TV service.

On Friday, Nov. 7 three high-ranking Disney executives, Disney Entertainment co-chairmen Dana Walden and Alan Bergman, along with ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro, issued a memo to employees regarding its standoff with YouTube TV.

The disagreement causing the ESPN and ABC outage stems from the "carriage fee" that YouTube TV pays Disney to broadcast its channels. Disney has faced similar negotiating standoffs with other broadcasters in recent years, including a 2021 outage on YouTubeTV that was resolved in two days.

Google’s battle with Disney over YouTube TV is only getting started, and Google just rejected Disney’s request to temporarily restore ABC to the platform so that US viewers can access coverage of elections taking place today (November 4).

Google declined a request from Disney to allow ABC back on YouTube TV for election coverage as the two giants are negotiating streaming rights.

A perk of subscribing to YouTube TV, per Google’s marketing, is the ability to “record it all with unlimited DVR space.” A footnote on the YouTube TV homepage notes that unlimited DVR is subject to “device, regional, and Internet restrictions” but overlooks an additional restriction in the form of multi-conglomerate spats.