Last weekend marked the one-year anniversary of an outage that took Vidgo‘s live TV streaming service offline. While there were some initial indications that this may only be a short-term outage, the service has failed to return a full year later, and it remains to be seen if the service will ever return.
The outage began on Sept. 29, 2023, when subscribers started to notice they couldn’t access any of the live TV channels included with their package. By Oct. 1, Vidgo had confirmed the issue, explaining that “the outage was triggered by a dispute with a vendor.” Vidgo also said it expected the service to be restored by the next day.
The service was not restored on Oct. 2, as suggested, and this was when Vidgo began advising existing subscribers would receive a two-week credit for the outage, along with an additional $10 monthly credit for each of the next six months.
This was later updated to customers would receive a full credit for the duration of the outage, once the outage was over.
Although the company was unable to advise as to when affected subscribers could expect their service to be restored, by Oct. 11, Vidgo explained that it was making “solid progress” with the situation. The company also continued to advise subscribers to make use of TV Everywhere support to access content in the meantime.
By the end of October 2023, Vidgo had stopped offering the option for new subscribers to sign up.
Once November rolled around, updates on the situation became very few and far between. A report by StreamTV Insider in late November claimed the outage was triggered by a payment issue between Vidgo and Harmonic.
For background on this partnership, while Vidgo originally launched in October 2019, this was a soft launch, and at a heavily discounted price. It wasn’t until December 2019 when the company officially launched its base live TV packages at their standard prices, and by January 2020, Harmonic’s VOS 360 platform had been confirmed as the platform chosen by Vidgo to power its live TV experience.
With Harmonic’s VOS 360 platform powering Vidgo’s live TV service, any dispute would naturally have a major impact on that experience, which reportedly is exactly what happened.
Regardless of the cause of the outage, there were some rumors that the service may return in late December. That never happened. In fact, not much at all happened until March of this year when we noted that the website had began temporarily redirecting visitors. By May, Vidgo’s website had become completely inaccessible to the public.
Soon after we first reported about the website going offline, Cord Cutters News reported that the company was still working on a comeback.
Nothing appears to have changed since then, with the website still offline, and no further indications that the service is planning to make a return anytime soon, if at all. Even if Vidgo was to make a return now, an entire year out of the market seems like a very long time to be gone, and especially a year which has seen some notable changes to the industry.
For example, Charter has been on a whirlwind distribution campaign recently and has agreed to bundle multiple streaming services with its live TV plans, including AMC+, BET+, Discovery+, Disney+, ESPN+, Max, Paramount+, and Vix. Not to mention, DirecTV only today announced a deal with EchoStar to buy its video business, which includes both Dish TV and Sling TV.
Then there’s Venu Sports. While currently blocked by a temporary injunction, Venu Sports plans to offer access to Disney, Fox, and Warners Bros. Discovery’s live sports channels and content without the need for a live TV plan.
Pending the outcome of a antitrust lawsuit brought by Fubo, which is currently set for trial in Oct. 2025, Venu Sports could have a major impact on the type of packages a live TV service like Vidgo can offer.
This is all also without taking into consideration the various changes that happen every year, including adjustments to the channel lineups, packages, and prices of the main live TV services.
Basically, if Vidgo does ever return, it will return to a very different, and far more competitive, landscape than the one it abruptly left behind a year ago this week.
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