Maine YouTube TV Viewers May Not Get the Patriots-Bucs Game on Sunday

No biggie. Just the biggest regular-season game in the history of the NFL. Tom Brady, who spent 20 years and garnered six Super Bowl rings, comes back to Gillette to face his old team and the coach that many believe was the reason for his departure to become Florida Man. This is epic. Shakespearian. With the entire nation watching.

Unless you have YouTube TV. Maybe.  

The game of the century will be on NBC. Here's where it gets sticky.

NBC/Universal is in negotiations right now with YouTube for carriage rights. Basically, YouTube pays NBC for the right to put them as one of their channels. The cable guys do the same thing. And it's BIG money. Now, the deadline for NBC to stay on YouTube TV is Thursday. Like, this Thursday. If the companies can't come to an agreement on the per-subscriber rate, then all the NBC stations (NBC Network, Telemundo, USA, Bravo, MSNBC, CNBC, and the Golf Channel) will be yanked from YouTube. So far, the negotiations have not gone well. YouTube TV, which is owned by Goggle, has said that if it cannot reach an agreement by Thursday, that it will reduce its monthly subscriber fees by $10 (from $64.99 to $54.99). 

I don't care about the discount. I want to watch the damn Pats-Bucs game.

Now, my sense is that this will be worked out by kickoff. But in case it doesn't, you can still get the game on NBC's Peacock streaming service, which is like 5 bucks a month. OR, you can always hear the Patriots on the radio at WBLM 102.9