I suspect Networks are struggling as well with the Youtube ad boycotting. They might not be able to accept you without knowing if ad rev will ever return.
With regards to Freedom they get a ton of applications in each day and the support team works really hard sorting through these, reviewing the channels and making sure everything is in order before accepting the channels. Unfortunately this takes some time, and at the minute it can take up to a week for users to be fully partnered with Freedom, while I understand and can appreciate the inconvenience this may cause, they are working as hard as they can