There is a problem when people talk about "I have YouTube cable" or "I get my cable through Hulu." No. No they don't. YouTube TV is decidedly NOT a cable provider, no matter how much society wants to make them one. I cut my cable in 2008 when I went to U-Verse. If this is "cable" then did YTTV customers truly "cut the cord" if they have a bundle of channels delivered via a third-party provider? I know someone who had satellite in 2002. Did he "cut the cord" back then? In that case, is DirecTV cable? IMO, "streaming" should be stuff like the above (YTTV, Hulu, DirecTV Stream) and "DTC" is what Peacock, Paramount+ and Max are. "Direct-to-consumer" because, well, it eliminates the middle man, aka the provider. Linear channels should be 3-4 types, the same they were in the 90s: Broadcast, pay/commercial, premium, PPV. Broadcast is FTA like ABC or CBS. Pay channels would be channels like CNN and ESPN. Premium is stuff like HBO and Showtime. PPV is the stuff where you buy each show/event/movie individually. To call something a "cable" channel when you don't have coaxial RG installed in your residence doesn't seem right. If you have FTTH and are getting your video content over the internet, do you really have "cable" TV?
Here's an example of what I don't like/understand from an article about this apparent Paramount mess. "falling cable subscriptions in the United States that has eroded profit for its TV" So people are going away from traditional cable (Spectrum, Comcast, Cox, tiny regional/local companies) to where, exactly? If they're going to a streaming provider, those companies (Paramount, Comcast, Disney, WBD) are still getting the money, just the same as 20 years ago when people went from Time Warner to Dish Network, right? If 500 million people switched TOMORROW from a traditional cable (coax RG) provider to Hulu, wouldn't Disney still be paying money to the owners of the channels? Therefore, shouldn't those channels all be ok? So where the hell are they going? DTC? 6-8 different DTC apps on 6-8 different billing cycles? Perhaps...but not all of them.
This is like complaining that we say we "dial" a phone number when we actually press virtual buttons or just click on a saved contact, and then we "hang up" without actually hanging anything. Sometimes words persist in the language even when the technical reason they entered the language no longer strictly applies. For people what are analyzing viewing data, there is a category of non-broadcast linear TV channels that are sold to consumers via companies that provide a bundle of channels for a fee. Those channels are called "cable channels" because most of them were created to be transmitted on cable. Now they can be transmitted with other technologies as well, but there's probably not much motivation to come up with a new word for this category. There have been non-coaxial methods to get these channels for decades.
Here's an odd one. We all know about the occasional disputes that happen between content owners and TV providers. We usually hear "about to expire" with no more than a month or so remaining. Apparently Disney and Google (aka YouTube TV) are up for renewal in... December. Why announce it now? Let us know in November. By then, they may even have a new deal in place. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/disney-dispute-may-last-straw-065507808.html
$42.99/mo for Venu Sports. If you sign up at launch, you'll be locked into that price for a year. https://www.sportsmediawatch.com/20...-venu-sports-pricing-paul-finebaum-extension/ Also interesting there is that Diamond could drop some Bally channels, *but* (not surprisingly), one option for those NBA teams is to move to an OTA option with an in-market paid app. And yet, some people will continue to think they'll be able to sign up for their favorite team's app no matter where they live in the country. (Ex: A Brewers fan who lives in Florida will be able to sign up for the Brewers app to watch all games there.)
I have a hunch there will quickly be a request for a cheaper version without ESPN+, especially for those that already have it bundled with Disney+ and Hulu.
Well, that price is hardly competitive. There's reports that Disney will offer a discount if you link your Disney/Hulu and Venu accounts.
It's a lower price than any existing option to get ESPN/ESPN2/FS1/FS2 via streaming, plus it has ESPN+ which is $11 by itself.
I posted elsewhere that a big target of Venu should be college sports fans. I guess with three of the included channels being conference networks that's kind of obvious. If I understand the current contracts correctly, Venu plus an antenna that gets you CBS, NBC, and CW would give you access to all P4 college football except a few Big Ten games on Peacock. With so many young people being cord-nevers, they should be looking to hook in recent alumni from big schools. It's not really a great targeted product for soccer fans, outside of being an option for the kind of person who gets Sling for a month because Fox is showing a big tournament.
Yeah. It seems to be more a "mainstream sports fan" thing. College football would be shown on ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, ESPN, ESPN2 ESPNU, SEC Network, ACC Network, ESPN+, maybe ESPN News on occasion, CBS Sports Network, FS1, FS2 (maybe) and BTN. What other nationally-available outlets show college football? Oh wait. I think the RSNs show some, but those would obviously be smaller conferences that don't have a whole lot of national interest. (Mount Union Purple Raiders, anyone?) The soccer leagues are, where, exactly? NBC, USA, Peacock, CBS, Paramount+, ESPN+, ABC and Fox. Throw in GolTV if it even still shows anything worthwhile, the Spanish-language channels, Vix, maybe Fox Soccer Plus, AppleTV and probably some other streaming apps. There's not a whole lot of overlap. There was a time when Fox Business Channel showed overflow stuff, but I think those days are long done now that FS2 has more availability. BTN+ is the outlier for college sports, but I don't think they have college football. They have college basketball and most everything imaginable. It's really designed for two sets of people: Fans who've moved away from their school and fans who need everything possible. I think everything else for the Big Ten on a linear TV channel. (Do other conferences have a la carte apps?) And that's a great idea about discounts. If you have the .edu email address and are an active student, give em $15 or so off per month. Of course, a lot of them just use their dorm cable system, their parents' logins or the cable that comes with their rent.
Agree if you are already paying $11 for ESPN+, you drop that and get $8 Paramount+ and $8 Peacock. Coupling those 3 gets you pretty much everything from the Big 5 except exclusive USA and CBS Sports Network content.
I'm glad this thread exists where people actually know what they're talking about. Someone on Reddit thinks YouTube TV is cable. "YTTV is cable. It just comes into your house with a different connector pin. It has always been cable and has always been referred to as such by real people. You just havent learned how to sift through the ads yet. Its 'not cable' in the same way U-verse was 'not cable' " So is DirecTV considered cable? Yes, I suppose the technical definition of cable could fit YouTube TV coming in on someone's coax or even fiber optic line, but they're wrong. YouTube TV is not cable TV. Just because you have Hulu (say) coming in on the same coax you had installed in 2002 doesn't mean you have cable TV. I would define "cable TV" as this: "A system of linear and on-demand TV, predominantly delivered by coaxial wiring operated by a cable TV provider." I know that's circular, but does anyone have anything better without using an outside source?
Most people equate cable as the anything that gives you the bundle of channels to watch regardless of how its distributed I view YouTubeTV as another form of cable just with a different distribution method....the principle behind the product is the same .
https://worldsoccertalk.com/tv/dazn-announces-7-year-global-deal-with-national-league/ DAZN has signed a deal with the National League.
That's nice, but there are actual formal definitions of cord cutting. The idea is very clearly cutting the (cable) cord and (landline) cord in favor of wireless technology as the method of distribution. Cable, satellite, and streaming live TV are all under the banner of MVPD (multichannel video programming distributors) but they aren't all cable. Streaming is literally done without the cord so it's "cord cutting."
IMO, and I'm probably wrong here, if you still have cable internet (say Xfinity) with Hulu, you're still using the cord and cable company. You still need "the cord" to stream, unless you're using one of those newer 5G services from the mobile phone company or Starlink. You're very much a cord-cutter if you fit into that first paragraph. Your last sentence isn't technically accurate.
According to Merriam-Webster, it is. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cord-cutting https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/cord-cutter-cable-tv-internet-wireless-word-usage
https://www.axios.com/2024/08/09/cable-tv-business-paramount-warner-bros-losses So if 200m households cancel their Xfinity, Spectrum, Cox, whatever and get Hulu, YTTV, Philo or whatever other service...ESPN, HGTV, CNN, USA and other channels are still getting that money, right? So how are these channel/content owners losing money?
Ad revenue has cratered for traditional TV while Pluto, the least watched of the big 3 FAST options, has reported over $1 billion in ad revenue the last 3 years. ESPN is paying something like $1.2 billion next year just in league broadcast rights. Even with their huge charge to carriers they're not making that back, hence all the talent cuts in recent years. People aren't signing up for those other services at nearly the pace they're leaving cable and satellite. There's around 40 million who have cut the cord but YTTV is the leader in streaming live TV with just over 10 million subscribers and nobody else has even half of that. Philo and Frndly both have just recently hit 1 million subscribers. In June standard YouTube accounted for 9.9% of all viewership while Tubi (2%), Roku Channel (1.5%), and Pluto (0.8%) combined for another 4.3%. That's increasing monthly and will likely surpass 15% total soon. Roku Channel just reported an average of 329 million hours of content viewed each day for Q2 of 2024. Antenna sales are up, and there seems to be a new OTA sub-channel monthly now. Maybe the biggest shocker for me was ION finishing 9th overall in viewership last year. It will be really interesting to see where CW and MeTV Toons end up this year.
If you cancel Spectrum and turn in your cable box to get YouTube TV you may have cut the cord, but you would still have a "cable package" in the eyes of the industry. If everyone that has canceled Comcast switched to YouTube TV or Sling, WBD and Paramount wouldn't have each reported billion dollar losses this week
Sure they would have. Even if everyone switched, the price is significantly lower. For $73 I get the channels I want from YouTube TV that would cost me $135 from my local cable company and $115 from DirecTV, with both cable and satellite requiring a 2 year contract and slapping on a crapload of hidden fees. That's either $744 or $504 annually saved before taxes and fees and that's coming out of someone's pocket. WBD, CBS/Viacom, and other are still paying for all the programming on channels that aren't carried by YouTube TV even if everyone switches to that service. Throw in the massive drop in ad revenue and the losses were coming no matter what.
http://www.awfulannouncing.com/warn...industry-zombie-waiting-misery-streaming.html The wording in the article really makes me think that DTC will be the future and we're all gonna end up paying yearly fees for 15 different apps. The big downside is that it's all gonna be fractured, shows are gonna go through a revolving door of who has what show and when they have it. As for what to watch? The algorithm will tell you. You watch one episode of House Hunters because your friend is on it and all of a sudden, your algorithm is totally wacky.
The best algorithm I've seen so far is Google TV, not any one particular app. Only the sponsored recommendations seem to miss the mark. Disney+, Hulu, and Max all made a profit recently. Peacock is right on the edge of profitability. The thing hurting WBD is their refusal to change quickly enough along with trying to do to many things at once. WB literally launched CNN+ 8 days before the merger with Discovery was finalized and never consulted David Zaslav about doing it, so he shut it down immediately. Tons of wasted money there. Despite those issues, and the $9 billion issue this last week, they did turn a profit with Max last year ($2.1 billion losses in 2022, $103 million profits 2023). Paramount sold the streaming rights to Yellowstone to Peacock less than 6 months before the CBS/Viacom merger, kneecapping their own streaming service. Another shortsighted move by execs who clearly didn't understand the world that was forming around them. We're going to see a lot of content that was being kept afloat solely by nonsensical cable distribution deals disappear. Things like those TLC "reality" shows that cost nothing to make, but were used to drive up the distribution rights of channel bundles, will disappear. We'll see shrinkage/consolidation of streamers. I think we'll see more recent content going on FAST channels, much like CBS/Viacom does with reruns of Yellowstone and their various new Star Trek shows to promote the next upcoming season. I think we'll also see more long term contracts for shows with built in audiences. Peacock leads the way there with what they're doing with The Office, with the extended length episodes that they've released for the most popular episodes. Netflix paid crazy money for Seinfeld and there seems to be no reason to think it's been a bad choice yet. I still think we end up mostly with hubs run by the major players that exist now where your level of access comes down to how much you're paying. You might start with the FAST option (Pluto TV), then move up to an ad-supported tier (Paramount+ w/ads), next would be an ad-free option (Paramount+), and then a premium mostly ad-free tier (Paramount+ w/Showtime & local CBS + CBSSN, etc.). One of the issues holding things like this back are the existing broadcast contracts that didn't include streaming. The next round of (sports especially) contracts should remedy that.
I have a Chromecast that I share with other people. We currently share the same Chromecast account... but if we all had different accounts, I suppose we'd not see other people's shows in the suggestions and recently viewed lists. We could also have different apps installed...like say one person just uses 2-3 apps and someone else watches others, they wouldn't need to see "unnecessary" apps. Or would it "bleed" over? If I watch Peacock on my second TV, the Chromecast (on a gmail used only for it) somehow picks this up on the main TV and suggests those Peacock shows on the main TV. I suspect "sponsored recommendations" miss the mark deliberately. Someone is being paid to force those into your screen. I seemed to get rid of my problem with suggested shows by changing my Chromecast view to larger tiles so it looks more like a Roku screen. I don't understand the FAST logic at all. ISTM that it's essentially "antenna TV, but through the internet" where you watch on their schedule, can't skip commercials, etc. If I'm watching some sort of newer/digital/streaming/etc, I want to be able to select a particular episode, have full rewind/FF/pause controls and no commercials.