YouTube TV loses ESPN, ABC and other Disney channels in fee dispute | Hacker News Reader

YouTube TV loses ESPN, ABC and other Disney channels in fee dispute

latimes.com

192 pointsaxiomdata316221 comments

I’m really surprised by the number of top level comments that are confusing two different products: YouTube and YouTube TV.

YouTube TV is basically cable TV delivered via the internet with some on-demand content and an “unlimited” DVR system. There are multiple tiers via add-on packages (just like cable), and there is no ad-free offering.

YouTube is the video sharing website everyone uses. The ad-free version of which is called YouTube Premium.

These two services have very little in common besides the obvious branding and parent company. The contract/fee dispute is between Disney and YouTube TV, and the result is that YouTube TV is currently not broadcasting Disney-owned television channels. Disney content is still all over YouTube itself via their YouTube “Channels.”

I agree that the branding was confusing, but it seems that most HN commenters aren't reading anything beyond the headline.

> YouTube TV is basically cable TV delivered via the internet

And the sooner that dies, the better. Cable TV is crap and I don't want to see that model of media succeed into the internet era.

Is it really much better to have five $15 services to get the same content?

If GP answers no, does that mean these are the only two options?

You still don't get it. I want the "channel" format of media (programmed video content aka broadcast programming) to die. Whether it's accessed by paying comcast to watch it over a settop box or paying google to watch it through a browser or app makes no difference to me, it's the same format of content and I want to see it die.

And it has been dying. Look at the ads the roll between the shows and it's clear that TV watchers are aging out. It's all hearing aid commercials and malpractice lawsuits' the only people watching TV through a settop box anymore are the elderly. Bringing that same format of content to youtube's platform, to be watchable on the devices young people use (smartphones, laptops, etc) is a play to make this format relevant to young people again. I hope they fail.

I think they're still trying to figure out a replacement that gives the channel/network/platform leverage over content producers, much like control over "prime time" and fall marketing blitzes did.

It's like unbundling $20 CD into $1 singles. Be prepared for when you get what you wish for. Linear channels and bundling is all to maintain top level revenue. Demonetization will be the death of big budget productions like HBO. We will have more algorithm greenlit average quality content like what pads out Netflix's catalog.

What crippled newspapers as a whole was essentially unbundling. The local car dealerships didn't actually want to pay for foreign news bureaus in Baghdad but if they wanted to run an ad that local people saw on Sunday, that's what they had to do. The crippling of the classified ad market by Craigslist was probably an even bigger blow.

Now, it's hard to argue that people shouldn't be able to pay for just what they want. But now you're effectively arguing for relatively expensive a la carte rentals/purchases which I'm guessing people wouldn't want either if you want to keep revenues neutral. People may want to pay only for the media they watch. But they may not want to pay $5 for a TV show even though I was probably paying way more than that per show when I had cable TV.

I will agree that the current state of broadcast TV is a rubbish dump, but there's value in a "channel" concept.

If I'm inherently after a passive entertainment experience, there are situations where I want the decisions made for me. If I put on the TV while I exercise, or for background while cooking or cleaning, I don't need it stopping every 30 minutes asking me to choose something else to watch, and yet I also don't want it showing 23 seasons of the Great British Bake Off in a row either. I'll put on a broadcast channel instead.

Well, in fairness, it really isn't the same content. Much of it is premium that wouldn't be on broadcast and it's all generally on demand. I dropped cable TV a couple years ago and while there's occasional live TV I'd maybe like to watch, overall I'm happier with a handful of on demand channels that I pay less for than I was paying for cable.

At this time it is much better. I can sign up for a service for a month and binge some shows. Then cancel the service and repeat for another offering. By rotating the services I subscribe to each month I’m effectively watching the content on all the services for a low monthly rate. Eventually these companies will charge an annual rate but right now it’s much better financially and otherwise than cable tv.

Cable TV was a screaming deal, so long as you could always stay on the promotional rate. I haven't had it in a while, but I used to call and "cancel" my service every 3 months to get 3 months of free premium channels and a reduced basic rate. It was pretty funny when I moved and had to actually cancel my service because obviously it was on my file and the support person was like sure no problem here you go and I had to clarify no I actually needed to cancel because I was leaving their service area.

Assuming a high quality internet connection is available, the qualifications for “screaming deal” would have to be:

1) on demand whatever you want to watch whenever you want to watch on whichever device you want to watch

2) no advertisement breaks

3) no mandatory long term contract (maximum length 1 month)

Ah, a modern version of the fable "The Boy Why Cried Wolf".

Though I suppose with a happier ending.

There’s only so much time in the day so people actually wanted a tiny fraction of that content. Basic cable was setup to be mandatory even if you wanted nothing in it and the money was to be made via advertising. Thus MTV added Real World and the history channel had Ice Road Truckers. Both popular shows, but seemingly out of scope except the audience was anyone flipping channels. This ends up being a quest for the cheapest content that still attracts an audience.

HBO on the other hand was constantly fighting for subscribers not just viewership. For them every viewer was worth more money so they had a high bar without much filler.

I'd certainly like it if I could pay YouTube TV $15 to get just the sports channels. I only subscribe a few months a year, for college football season. I don't like to watch anything else. So I'm spending $65/mo to watch 3-4 games, which is a little embarrassing to post.

I do think I'd rather pay YouTube than ESPN directly, because the latter's video services have never worked well for me. Part of me wishes the various services would just tell Disney to get lost, and let them see how much they like providing that service on their own. Though, the conventional wisdom seems to be that live sports programming can't exist on it's own, and that 'regular TV' can't exist without live sports.

>Though, the conventional wisdom seems to be that live sports programming can't exist on it's own, and that 'regular TV' can't exist without live sports.

It feels that way. On the one hand, it seems like you have to be something of a super-fan to subscribe to one or more of the sport/league-specific sites/apps. On the other hand, local sports availability or even just sports as TV on in background seems like a pretty significant sweetener for a lot of people who might not pay for TV just for the occasional late night talk show, local news broadcast, or reality show.

Sports isn't enough for me to pay for cable any longer. But, if I did, watching a game now and then would probably be what would push me over the line to pay up.

Sports is now getting into the territory music did in the early 2000's and movies did before streaming hit big -- where it's become significantly easier and convenient to just pirate than to do it legally.

It's much easier to just find pirated live game streams than it is to figure out the cobweb of television rights, which service actually shows local sports, if you're "in" or "out" of market, etc.

I'm sure the economics are still strongly in favor of the TV licensing deals but this has to turn at some point, I'd think, where leagues can go direct-to-consumer across all markets or they just sign deals with streaming companies directly, which Amazon is already doing with the NFL.

Unfortunately the industry "bundles" (which is really de facto tying, illegal) channels with no value to most with those have are high value. The market for joint subscriptions to History, Bravo, TLC, and ESPN is probably fairly slim.

IANAL but as I understand it, tying is generally only illegal (violation of antitrust) under specific circumstances that relate to having monopoly power in a market.

I think that's a fair interpretation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tying_(commerce)

> Tying (informally, product tying) is the practice of selling one product or service as a mandatory addition to the purchase of a different product or service. In legal terms, a tying sale makes the sale of one good (the tying good) to the de facto customer (or de jure customer) conditional on the purchase of a second distinctive good (the tied good). Tying is often illegal when the products are not naturally related. It is related to but distinct from freebie marketing, a common (and legal) method of giving away (or selling at a substantial discount) one item to ensure a continual flow of sales of another related item.

> Some kinds of tying, especially by contract, have historically been regarded as anti-competitive practices. The basic idea is that consumers are harmed by being forced to buy an undesired good (the tied good) in order to purchase a good they actually want (the tying good), and so would prefer that the goods be sold separately. The company doing this bundling may have a significantly large market share so that it may impose the tie on consumers, despite the forces of market competition. The tie may also harm other companies in the market for the tied good, or who sell only single components.

> One effect of tying can be that low quality products achieve a higher market share than would otherwise be the case.

> Tying may also be a form of price discrimination: people who use more razor blades, for example, pay more than those who just need a one-time shave. Though this may improve overall welfare, by giving more consumers access to the market, such price discrimination can also transfer consumer surpluses to the producer. Tying may also be used with or in place of patents or copyrights to help protect entry into a market, discouraging innovation.

> Tying is often used when the supplier makes one product that is critical to many customers. By threatening to withhold that key product unless others are also purchased, the supplier can increase sales of less necessary products.

> In the United States, most states have laws against tying, which are enforced by state governments. In addition, the U.S. Department of Justice enforces federal laws against tying through its Antitrust Division.

Yes. We finally have a la carte. At a grocery store we pick out exactly what we want. If you were given a take it or leave bundle of $85 you'd laugh and walk out.

It doesn't really make sense in a grocery store context. But that's exactly what something like a farm-share is.

the youtube TV model (which is also the Sony Vue (they're gone! heh) / Sling model) is nothing like the cable TV model, because these companies do not provide any last mile physical infrastructure. therefore you can switch between any number of providers with no effort. Assuming the other providers can get their fucking act together techinically/user-experience-wise (YTV is like vastly better UX-wise, looks like PS VUE has already been shut down, sad), there's no way a single provider can gouge captive customers for $180 a month, because you can switch freely. meaning it becomes a market again! even liberal democrats like me like markets when they are appropriate.

my physical cable to my house is provided by Altice One, I have no option to switch that at all (no there's no FIOS or fiber option here). that's a monopoly.

> the youtube TV model (which is also the Sony Vue (they're gone! heh) / Sling model) is nothing like the cable TV model, because these companies do not provide any last mile physical infrastructure.

Last mile infrastructure is not what I find objectionable about cable TV, and last mile infrastructure isn't going anywhere anyway. I want this to die: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadcast_programming and I don't care what medium is used to transmit it. Whether it's a coaxial cable, radio transmission from terrestrial tower or satellite, or the internet, it makes no difference to me. The format itself is what I find awful.

> Sony Vue (they're gone! heh)

Yeah, because broadcast programming is a dying format for boomers. I celebrate the demise of all of it, and any company that produces it.

If you don't want to watch broadcast TV (I don't), don't watch it? I guess I don't get the hate. There are a ton of things I don't watch or listen to. And broadcast TV probably does now and then produce something I do want to watch on-demand.

I don't watch it.

> I don't get the hate.

I live in a society with people who do watch it. I don't like the way broadcast TV turned people into numbed couch potatoes watching hours of ads a day.

The ads are not any more of a problem than the content and the shitty content is available in many formats.

The content itself is often ads. All of those pawn shop shows might as well be infomercials.

As opposed to netflix users who are more likely not to binge because not having ads and having the next show play makes it less easy to binge?

One does not redeem the other.

Wouldn’t a liberal naturally be in favor of individual liberties and freedoms, and by extension of the free markets?

Liberal means progressive which means giving up individual rights while controlling the market to protect individuals from bad choices.

Liberal does not mean progressive.

It does in the US, unfortunately.

Outside the US, yes.

Inside the US, the term swapped to refer to social-liberalism rather than classical-liberalism during the great depression.

>"I’m really surprised by the number of top level comments that are confusing two different products: YouTube and YouTube TV."

Thanks for the clarification. It probably adds to the confusion that the landing page for "YouTube TV" goes to the "youtube.com" domain:

https://tv.youtube.com/

People don't confuse Gmail with Google Maps or Google Search just because they are on the same root domain

Maybe not, but "It's very similar to this other thing, but under a different name" isn't exactly an uncommon theme for Google. That's how we ended up with Inbox vs Gmail, Google Play Music vs Youtube Premium, Google Chat vs Allo, Hangouts vs Google Voice, and the others I'm sure I'm forgetting.

They don’t call gmail “YouTube mail” or google maps “YouTube maps” either.

That was just one example... Surely you can think of others.

How about Google Play, Google Fi, and countless others? They all share the same domain

YouTube TV is a separate $65/month subscription. Seems like an absurdly high price relative to Hulu or Netflix, but it’s meant to compete more with local cable packages.

Without the premium content, it’s hard to do that. I think the content providers know this and are trying to squeeze YouTube into giving more of their profits to the content providers. Either that, or to raise prices to be similar to cable.

YouTube TV is claiming Disney content added $15/month to the bill, so they’re dropping the price by $15/month as long as Disney is out:

> “We will be decreasing our monthly price by $15, from $64.99 to $49.99 while this content remains off of our platform,” YouTube TV said in its Friday night statement.

> so they’re dropping the price by $15/month as long as Disney is out

FWIW, I can’t see any traditional cable TV provider doing this. They might even charge an extra fee as a cherry on top.

Not only did they drop the price, but in the email they referred subscribers to the Disney+ package that includes Hulu and ESPN.

That's actually the reason for the price drop: They are giving you money to get Disney+ so you don't just cancel your YouTube TV subscription and go elsewhere.

It's a retention move that they accept a short lack of their cut of the Disney portion in exchange for not losing customers entirely.

It’s not comparable. Disney+ doesn’t include any live content

Exactly. These are the live stations being dropped:

    ABC
    ABC News Live
    Disney Channel
    Disney Junior
    Disney XD
    ESPN
    ESPN2
    ESPNU
    ESPNEWS
    Freeform
    FX
    FXX
    FXM
    National Geographic
    National Geographic Wild
    SEC Network

Of those, the Disney bundle would only cover the sports channels on ESPN+ (I'm assuming it has all the cames broadcast on the channels.)

Edit: according to other comments ESPN+ doesn't even cover all the sports on the ESPN2 and ESPN3 channels.

Doesn't D+ include all of the shows from all of those networks except for FX and ABC?

Hulu + LiveTV is $65 and Sling is about $50 and Youtube TV $65.

These aren’t really comparable to standard Hulu or Netflix or Amazon Prime etc. It’s for people that want to pretend they’re cord-cutting while buying the exact same thing from a streaming company.

And because you're buying essentially the same content package, there's no reason one would expect it to be significantly cheaper just because it's streamed.

As a content package, it's evolved to be something largely different from what you get from the streaming services like Netflix. It's largely sports, news/talk shows, and reality TV and other relatively low-cost lightly scripted/unscripted content, some documentaries... You still have some traditional network content but it's been a while since I've even heard of a network drama or comedy of note.

Netflix with all their cash still has basically nothing for live news/talk shows and sports. It’s bizarre.

Sports that a mass audience wants to watch is expensive (hence the OP). And establishing a news/talk show brand that people would subscribe to Netflix to get wouldn't be easy (and is probably a very different thing than acting as the studio for scripted shows). [ADDED: And honestly some politically polarized crap would be far more likely to fit that bill than historical network news organizations, however relatively superficial they were in some ways.]

Remember Netflix' incentives are very different from a network. Netflix wants to acquire and retain subscribers which tends to favor stickier content rather than filling up a schedule with programming that people will tune into out of habit.

Put another way, the network business model is essentially a legacy model. I'm not sure why Netflix would want to recreate an uber-Network.

Why would they? There are tons of free options for live news. Also they do have talk shows like the one letterman did.

Not really. I buy youtube tv because I still want certain channels but I like the strraming aspects like not using a standard aweful cable box, watching from anywhere and from any device and the unlimited cloud dvr (which makes commercials a moot point except for the rare live show I watch). Losing ESPN is a big deal for me as I am a sports junky.

Theres one key difference - you can share your YoutubeTv account with 3 couples.

YoutubeTV lets you create 6 accounts and use 3 simultaneously. I live in NY and share my account with 2 friends in CT for <25$ a person. Absolute steal and a really great product.

> It’s for people that want to pretend they’re cord-cutting while buying the exact same thing from a streaming company.

It legitimately is way better than cable, though. Ignoring the disputes over fees, I once tried Spectrum's TV Android app (probably 3-4 years ago, I gave up on getting it to work), and this is what I experienced:

* Refuses to work if a VPN is on

* Must disable developer tools (doesn't matter if you changed any settings in there or not)

* Root check

* Must be from a Spectrum home IP (and remember, you can't VPN to your home network to use this app)

* Must allow access to all contacts, all texts, etc or the app would close itself (there is no legitimate justification for this, unlike potential contract stipulations requiring no root, etc - it's purely for selling all your data)

* Didn't even work after I installed it on a totally stock Android device on my home network

* No web interface; if you can't run the app, too bad

Compared to that, YT TV's app is a breath of fresh air. But ignoring the streaming convenience, you also have:

* No ads in the TV guide (which is also more responsive than any DVR I've ever experienced)

* Unlimited DVR is nice (and it's not utter dogshit hardware that would've been considered unimpressive in the 90s)

* You don't need a cable box - just a Chromecast (which is absolute tiny by comparison) or a TV with Chromecast built-in

* The pricing is much easier to understand

Of course, I don't actually pay for it. My mother does, and she put my Google account as an allowed user. I just use it to watch hockey.

It's true that you're paying for the same product, but it's delivered in a package that doesn't scream "fuck you, pay me."

The interface is awful. Just awful. And slow on any hardware I have available.

They are lowering the price when one channel leaves but you can’t pick which channels you want.

Lastly YouTubeTV doesn’t solve any problems. For instance local channel access is limited to one location.

You’re just saying words now. The app runs smoothly for me even on a Kindle tablet (which can barely run a browser without lag). Any semi-modern device is more than capable of running either YouTube app

My TCL Roku TV isn't more than 2 years old.

Budget tv brand skimps on smart tv chips? I’m shocked.

Back when I still had Spectrum, I was happy to find out the way those checks are implemented in the Android app was (thankfully) as poorly done as the user experience. With adb or any app that can launch hidden activities, it is/was possible to enter the debug menu and disable every one of the client-side checks. No reverse engineering required :)

I stuck with that for years until fiber was available in my area since a threaten-to-cancel call got my TV price down to $0/month (on top of internet).

If their TV app is anything like their "My Spectrum" app for managing your internet service, my god, I don't have high expectations for these types of apps but having the gall to ship something that low-quality is legitimately impressive.

On the other hand, 65 bucks a month is more expensive than my local Comcast package with the premium sports channels (which yttv doesn't even have the option for), plus Comcast has 4k live channels and surround sound. I think their feeds are also less compressed.

And the YouTube tv interface is legit the worst possible interface to watch TV on TV. I’ve tried it in at least 3 different platforms and it’s a hot mess. The DVR offering is unbeatable. But again, they remove the ability to skip ads after a few days and replace regular TV ads with targeted ads.

Pretty much the worst of all worlds.

Youtube TV does have sports channels you can add-on, but I'm assuming you're referring to a specific bundle which has no equivalent.

I checked the Spectrum website, and the cheapest TV-only package they have is $77.11 for the first month, $66.40 for the next 11, and $98 thereafter. (First month has $9.99 self-install fee - you already pay every month for the cable box and install it yourself, but they charge you even if you pick it up from the store!)

But that's "Mi Plan Latino" - no sports channels. The cheapest with sports, TV Select, is $87.71 for the first month, $77.10 for the next 11, over $110 thereafter. I'm sure I could get better rates by calling them, and I have some competition in my area so I know I could actually get them, but I value my sanity too much for that.

Spectrum also doesn't have any 4k, not even through their app, though they say "we're working to add it soon" [0]. Also no surround [1]. For me, it would make no sense to go with Spectrum even if the alternative was me paying for Youtube TV.

[0]: https://www.spectrum.com/cable-tv/apple-tv-faq

[1]: https://www.spectrum.net/support/tv/spectrum-tv-app-troubles...

What premium sports channels are you missing?

Root Sports NW, which has the Mariners, Kraken, and I think Sounders, but they're on Prime Video too.

If Google actually cared about users, any of those first five bullet points would be grounds to ban an app from the Play Store.

The Spectrum Roku app is solid because I use it as an alternative to cable. Roku has a no 3rd party tracking policy(according to the roku rep and from my testing.)

They may not have 3rd party tracking, but they sure have a lot of first party tracking. Multiple times a minute I see requests coming from my Roku.

My fam shares youtube tv with 4 people, so it's like $20 each. That immediately makes it far better than cable.

there are some differences so the prices can't be taken at face value. For example, Sling stopped providing NBC regional sports networks I use to watch the San Jose Sharks. I had to switch to Youtube TV. These regional channels are super value as there is no way to get them through other direct streaming services. ESPN+ will do regional blackouts for example if you are local region is broadcasting the games.

I will also say Youtube TV is not the "Exact same thing" that the cable company offers. Fundamentally the product/channels are, but youtube TV gets all the tech right.

> YouTube is the video sharing website everyone uses. The ad-free version of which is called YouTube Premium.

Technically YouTube Premium is a package designed to bolster their failing YouTube Music product that few want.

I'd gladly pay $7.50 a month for AD Free YouTube, but $15 is too much.

I used to be grandfathered in for the Play Music all access + YT premium + YT red for $15/month plan.

That was a pretty good deal for me. But without Play Music (YT Music was awful at the time), I couldn't justify the cost.

> I'd gladly pay $7.50 a month for AD Free YouTube

In some regions you can actually get this. It’s called “Premium Lite”.

https://www.youtube.com/premiumlite

I’m paying 69 NOK which given currency conversion is roughly $7.60, so it’s more or less literally what you ask for.

For those outside the offered regions (thus getting geoblocked) this is literally what the page says for me (copy & paste):

—————————————-

FAQ

What is included with Premium Lite?

YouTube

• Ad-free videos: Watch millions of videos uninterrupted by ads. Learn more

YouTube Kids

• Ad-free in the YouTube Kids app

Premium Lite doesn't include ad-free access to the YouTube Music app.

> I’m really surprised by the number of top level comments that are confusing two different products: YouTube and YouTube TV.

Are you that surprised? The branding is a complete mess. And Youtube TV is not available in most markets so many people have never heard of it.

There also seems to be confusion that ESPN+ is equivalent to ESPN, but ESPN+ does not carry the linear programming of ESPN. Using part of the $15 YouTube TV discount to purchase ESPN+ will not make you whole on the lose of ESPN - still no live ESPN content.

ESPN+ does provide some live TV, but not all of it. For example, it contains the upcoming monday's NFL game, but none of the NCAA games today.

https://www.espn.com/espnplus/schedule/_/type/upcoming/categ...

Live UFC events are also shown on ESPN+. Big main events are primarily only offered through ESPN+ as well.

Which is why I forego watching sports altogether. If there was a simple link on US Tennis or Wimbledon’s website to pay $20 or even $50 or $100 to watch the tournament, I would pay it.

But I am not going to jump through hoops and pay for stuff I do not want, and most importantly, I am not going to spend time researching what is and is not available on + versions versus not +.

Same with NHL. I would pay to watch ice hockey, I will not pay to risk being unable to watch because I live too close to the stadium and hence should be blacked out.

I also will not pay to have advertisement breaks shown to me.

Why are you surprised that two identically named services they both stream video content are not known to be different by consumers?

I'm so frustrated by the state of things as I only subscribed to YoutubeTV because I wanted to watch Mets baseball and media blackouts prevent me from streaming despite my MLB.tv subscription.

The price has only risen over the years and it's been a pretty bitter pill to swallow.

I already pay for Disney+ but am also paying for their content through YoutubeTV, which I rarely consume (never watch the disney channel; sometimes I have to watch baseball on ESPN because of media rights).

ABC, which is really only used to record the Bachelor/ette programs in this house, is free with an antenna (but lacking the DVR). Not to mention you can watch it a day later using the Hulu subscription we also pay for.

I love the DVR feature of YoutubeTV, but I really only record content that's free over the airwaves. Including This Old House, which is now owned by Roku and has it's own for pay streaming service.

I'm paying eight ways to Sunday for this content, and increasingly of the opinion that it's not worth it.

EDIT: Anyone know of a DVR + digital antenna solution I could implement?

EDIT2: Just pulled the digital antenna out of the drawer and, as expected, the features of the surrounding landscape block all the channels.

TiVo still exists I guess if you can receive over the air.

> EDIT: Anyone know of a DVR + digital antenna solution I could implement?

Not sure about the current generation of devices but I had a HomeRun device [1] in the past and it was great.

More recently I think I heard of a FireTV product that had an antenna and DVR support.

[1] https://www.silicondust.com/

I have been using an HD Homerun Extend bought used off eBay since 2015, with an HD antenna on a mast above the roof. For a few years, I used Windows Media Center's free electronic program guide as a DVR. That data feed became unstable, so I switched to program data from Schedules Direct[0], which costs $25/yr.

[0] https://www.schedulesdirect.org/

Plex works well with the silicon dust boxes and an antenna

Yes, this is the thing that gets me. I'm paying a lot, for a bunch of separate services that have some but not complete overlap, because it's the only way to get all the stuff people in the family want. If it all worked well and wasn't a huge pain in the butt, I wouldn't even mind paying the amount we're paying. But it DOESN'T work well. Every app is different, things are constantly changing, now I have to explain to the rest of the family (who were skeptical about getting rid of cable in the first place) why they can't get ABC and ESPN on YouTube TV where they're used to getting it.

This is probably making all the rights-holders happy because they're making more money, but it's a short-term solution. In the long run, they're going to be driving viewers away and won't be able to win them back. Yes, TV-watching is a pretty ingrained habit for a lot of people, but it's not set in stone. Other forms of entertainment can and will replace it if it becomes too much of a pain, too expensive, or too confusing.

Habit is a good way of putting it. As you say, it's pretty ingrained for a lot of people to switch on Sunday football, the Food Network, CNN, etc. and watch fairly passively/sort of in the background. But there's some point where it all becomes too much of a pain or costs too much. Change does happen over time. I know in my case, it was the realization I was paying $100/month to record shows to my DVR I never got around to watching and maybe have one or two sports games a month on in the background.

If you're inclined to try (with shields up!), the user experience and video quality of pirate sports streams have improved dramatically in the last few years.

It's an interesting ethical quandary. I wouldn't mind chipping in financially but not with the current business model. Bundling TV channels I don't care about? No thanks. Local blackouts? Please. Paying the services that engage in these anti-consumer practices is only exacerbating the problem. I see pirate streams as doing my part to force the parties involved to find another way.

As another comment alluded, this is an industry on the precipice of a moment. Along the lines of the arrival of Spotify, or the iPod. We're not far away now.

Personally I'm delighted to trade ABC, ESPN, etc [1] for a $15 reduction in my YouTube TV bill. It just makes me wish Google would unbundle all their different providers so I could choose only the ones I want.

[1]

Your local ABC channel, ABC News Live, Disney Channel, Disney Junior, Disney XD, Freeform, FX, FXX, FXM, National Geographic, National Geographic Wild, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN3 (by authentication to the ESPN app), ESPNU, ESPNEWS SEC Network, ACC Network.

I don't have YouTube Tv but your comment almost made me dry heave a little realizing we are back at square one with cable tv and bundling channels users don't want and forcing them to pay for stuff. I haven't had cable tv in years but seldom don't miss a show I want to watch. It is mostly all online if you know where to search. Also Canadian so no one comes knocking on my door for downloading.

Sports is the anchor by which unbundling won’t happen for a long time, especially with linear TV.

This is partially because it benefits the conglomerates business models to have as many channels and content streams as possible to sell ad time on, and partially because for sports teams they can functionally name their price.

In seattle, the brand new hockey team is only available through Root Sports, a smallish production company owned by Warner media and the baseball team. You can only watch the new hockey team if you subscribe to a cable package or online cable package (YouTube tv etc).

Why would a brand new team with no established fan base want to not be in front of as many eyeballs as they can? Because they earn more money when someone pays them to put them behind a cable company.

At no point does this “competition”, which it isn’t, benefit consumers. We used to regulate things like this.

I've not looked into how the US cable market is doing, but here in Denmark it feels like we're very close to cable/bundling snapping. The cable companies are forced to raise prices each year, mostly because of sports and people are cancelling in droves. In 2015 93% of Danes had cable, in 2019 less than 80% had cable and during 2020 - 2022 the largest provider lost at least 250.000 subscribers, pushing them well below 1 million subscribers. Many others have downgrade their subscription to the bundles that doesn't include sports channels.

At some point the remaining subscribers can't pay the cost of the ridiculous fees charged for the major sporting events. When that happens the fees must come down, or the sporting companies must find a different solution.

Honestly a great solution for the major sports, like football in Europe, would be to great something like what the MLB did in the US. I know a lot of football fans who'd love to get a subscription for all the Champions League games. Just a fixed price and then watch any game you like. Why pay for Formula 1, hockey or even the Bundesliga, if you only care about the Danish Superliga and Champions League.

In the US American football only recently became available on streaming - it is currently $450 or $500 per season. You can go to a bar every week and have several drinks and a meal for that money. It’s a little crazy.

$500 a year is still at around half the price of cable tv where I live, if you want any sport, largest cable package would be $1213 per year. So you could get all the games you wanted to see, rather than just the ones the TV stations decided to buy, and still have money left over to subscribe to a few streaming services.

Edit: Something something, cost of living. $500 is 3300DKK, which would let you go to a bar, have a meal and four or five beers only seven times.

A meal and 5 beers cost $70 in Denmark? That's expensive.

Sorry, haven't been out for a while, I was wrong about the price of beer. It has gone up. The five beers (0.5L) is $43.95, leaving $26 that's going to be a rather cheap meal, you're certainly not eating at the bar on game day at that point. You could get ribs or a burger at a restaurant, but you're a little short if you want steak.... And you don't exactly have money for a drink with your meal.

All the Scandinavian countries are expensive (when converting from USD), especially for alcohol.

Where is this streaming option available for $500? I do not see it on nfl.com If it is subject to blackouts, it does not count.

https://www.nfl.com/ways-to-watch/

I'm not OP, but the NFL's streaming service is called 'NFL Sunday Ticket' ( https://nflst.directv.com/ ) and costs $99 per month.

For that price, you get all the NFL games except Monday night and Thursday night games...

This is the message I get:

>Sorry, your address is not eligible.

This is the kind of BS that makes not only not buy sports, but to avoid it.

Regarding sports, there are companies such as DAZN and Amazon which break the bundling. They get the rights for a certain sport/league in a country, and if you want to watch, you pay only for that, directly.

In the Chicago area I just about lost my crud with the new "Marquee Sports Network". It's a $7 a month price hike that every subscriber in the area has to suffer on every single cable provider because the Cubs struck a deal with Sinclair to create the channel.

I don't understand how it's legal. Imagine if Netflix could force everyone in a geographic area to subscribe or lose the ability to stream all non-Netflix stuff. It wouldn't even make sense, but this is what happened here.

I think we should kick the Cubs out of Chicago for pulling a stunt like this during a pandemic when most people are barely able to pay their existing bills. Sports teams are absolute vampires that abuse the local population in the name of obscene profits.

Sinclair also ruined us here in DFW. Suddenly the Texas Rangers, Dallas Mavericks, and Dallas Stars are only available on Bally's network which the big streamers do not carry. We used to be able to watch all games on the regional Fox Sports network which was a huge selling point for me switching to streaming. Now the word is Bally's expects to release their own app and subscription service in like 2023...sigh...

>> In seattle, the brand new hockey team is only available through Root Sports, a smallish production company owned by Warner media and the baseball team. You can only watch the new hockey team if you subscribe to a cable package or online cable package (YouTube tv etc).

It's actually worse than that. I've looked into it, because I'd like to watch Mariners and Kraken games in Portland (blacked out here too). Root Sportsis only available through cable providers and FuboTV or Directv Stream. No other streaming services offer it and there is no way to subscribe directly. It's a mess, so I generally don't watch the games or pirate them.

Right? I used to just turn on YouTube TV for hurricane season for local coverage in case of a power outage. It's far easier to keep a cell phone charged than deal with a digital antenna (which might have been lost to high winds anyway) and relatively power hungry TV just to see what's going on. Then my wife started using the app too so I can't easily turn it off.

Back when Big Ugly Dishes were a thing it was far cheaper to piecemeal subscribe to your desired packages. Then DirecTV came along and forced the cable tv model on their subscribers and lobbied hard for laws that killed BUDs. I remember doing the math at the time and DirecTV was about double the price of a BUD.

Now we're back to adhoc subscription if you want to use a bunch of disparate apps and websites, so in one way it could be cheaper. But each streaming site charges retail prices to consumers so in aggregate it ends up costing as much or more than in the cable model. Even so the forced subsidy of ESPN in particular has always been a deeply aggravating thing for me. Sort of like agreeing to split lunch evenly and then discovering after the fact everyone's having sandwiches except the one guy who ordered steak.

Check for local news apps/websites and also national network news apps if they own your local station. Some provide access year round, and your local stations will almost certainly have live storm coverage. I can watch multiple local stations during a storm for free on Apple TV

Also Canadian so no one comes knocking on my door for downloading.

Sure about that?

https://www.thelawyersdaily.ca/articles/12443/copyright-trol...

I have heard this but last I heard, not sure a source or time to search right now, that the courts have been favoring our side and don't really want the average Canadian being sued. They are going after the commercial entities reselling these services like streaming site operators. The thing is to download only which sucks because it is not nice to be a leech. At this point in time very few people worry about it. Back in the day I used to download hundreds of GB per month in video games movies and tv shows. Now I will find the odd movie I never had a chance to watch.

I hate bundling. I have been paying my cable company money for football and Formula one. I don't watch that stuff.

How about we just pay for the things we use? Imagine if a restaurant put a bottle of wine on your bill even though you don't like wine.

> Personally I'm delighted to trade ABC, ESPN, etc [1] for a $15 reduction in my YouTube TV bill. It just makes me wish Google would unbundle all their different providers so I could choose only the ones I want.

They could make several tiers:

- Youtubers-only content: no big media included

- Tier 2: the same + ABC, ESPN, etc...

- Tier 3: same as 2 + exclusive content only available for Tier 3 subscribers

would be a good business model rather than just charging to remove ads.

…like cable TV?

Cable doesn't offer this, generally, because ESPN subsidizes so many other channels and Disney has a lot of power here.

They strongarm a lot of providers and I'd be surprised if YouTube held out. They will lose subscribers.

It's not really because ESPN "subsidizes" other channels. ESPN is expensive. It's because sports is the primary hook for a lot of people to continue getting broadcast/cable TV at all outside of on-demand subscriptions. It's not enough of a hook for me to pay but, if I were to do so, it would be the main reason.

What I meant by subsidizes is that it is the hook that allows the others to exist at a smaller profit margin.

This is another comment confusing YT with YT TV. www.youtube.com didn’t lose anything - tv.youtube.com did, which is cable TV over the internet, and it’s just like any other channel dispute that has happened in years past with traditional cable offerings.

Curious what the remaining value of YouTube TV even is then. With most sports cut out is it really worth $50/mo?

No, I only used it during football season and now I'm out Monday Night Football. They had already made it harder to set my location to my teams local market (still possible with vpn + location guard but not on TV without chromecasting). With the season nearly over and the Giants season completely over I will probably just cancel early.

All football other than monday is on over the air, all you need is an antenna or twitch.tv on thursdays.

There's also late night talk shows, reality TV, etc. I don't really watch any of this and, hence, don't get cable TV any longer but many do. I think just having something on in the background is appealing to some (although there are alternatives to that).

My sense is that there's very little really interesting scripted TV on non-premium streaming broadcast/cable at this point. I certainly haven't heard of any "must see TV" on any of the networks or even stations like AMC for ages.

Zero value to me now that ESPN (Monday Night Football) is off the platform.

I hate it, but I really do pay that much per month to watch a single game a week plus have the convenience for guests having access to "regular TV".

ESPN has a value of zero to me. Can’t be bothered to watch it. I get YouTube TV for all of the other stuff.

And here's the problem with cable and the OTT providers as well.

The content networks force an all or nothing contract. ESPN must be licensed for all subscribers or no ESPN option for anyone.

The same thing that forced me off of cable has forced me off of OTT.

Thing is I would be delighted the the opposite. I'd love to only pay for ESPN and the other sports channels only for $15/mo. Maybe add in CNN/FOX/MSNBC/Etc. for the wife to have on in the background, but plenty of ways to get that otherwise cheaply. OTA works fine for local news, even if the apps are a bit buggy if you want anything DVR or digitally distributed.

As would likely most I believe. Thus sports propping up this ancient model and myself being part of the problem.

I'm surprised Disney/ESPN is only $15/mo of the bill to be honest, I think Youtube is taking a hit there as I'd bet it's more than half the total base subscription fee.

"I'm surprised Disney/ESPN is only $15/mo of the bill to be honest"

It's probably more. They're just happy to keep your money.

$15 sounds about right. It may even be closer to $20. The reason we won't see a full ESPN only subscription anytime soon is that the current model allows them to collect $15/mo from everyone versus whatever the price would need to be if you are only selling subs to sports fans. It wouldn't surprise me if the subscription cost would be over $100/mo to keep the same revenues.

What happens to big time sports when the fans are priced out of the arena and priced out of watching on TV as well?

ESPN will be the last to offer their own subscription, because then people would know how much they are getting away with in broadcast programming. YouTube is almost certainly paying more. Decades of strongarming TV networks has allowed Disney/ESPN to soak up 40%-60% of traditional cable bills at the expense of all other content owners. YT is taking a gamble that backed by the weight of Alphabet they can end this corruption. Sadly, I'm not sure it's a smart bet.

> ESPN will be the last to offer their own subscription

https://plus.espn.com/

ESPN+ does not stream ESPN or ESPN2 live broadcasts.

I have no evidence to support this, but my assumption would be that if ESPN were offered separately they would need to charge substantially more to break even.

My thesis for this is that most people aren’t sports fans, but they pay for sports whether they want to or not due to all the bundling. In a way, non-fans are subsidizing the content for fans.

My sneaky suspicion is that unbundling sports would be a cataclysmic event for the sports television industry. I would pay $15/month for ESPN but I wouldn’t pay $25.

What do you think?

Youtube TV would GLADLY unbundle ESPN. Disney will not allow it. Disney insists that every Youtube TV subscriber pays for ESPN or nobody gets it.

Google is fairly asking that whatever price they pay for ESPN, that no other streaming service (including Hulu which Disney owns) gets a better price. Disney said no. This is the fundamental reason Google does not now have an agreement with Disney for the channels.

This is just a small microcosm of what’s going on in the cable TV world. Many channels are raising their fees, but the cable providers are very reluctant to raise the price charged to end users. Instead, cable providers are opting to drop channels. This is leading to an increasingly fragmented cable TV market where it’s impossible to get all the channels you may want to watch. For instance, Comcast just dropped MSG, which is a channel for NY-based sports. The only alternative many people have is to use FuboTV, but Fubo has dropped Adult Swim for the same reason. So now it’s impossible to get both MSG and Adult Swim.

Gonna take 5 years for this market collapse to sort itself out, and by then they will realize the younger consumer has already moved on even from live sports, the last thing holding them to cable/broadcast television.

A few years back my cable provider got in a tiff with the local CBS affiliate about programming fees.

Each side blamed the other and neither side was willing to compromise. The cable provider dropped the channel in retaliation and for some 2 years we had no CBS. (Naturally there was no discount in the monthly cable bill as a result of this “principled stand”.)

If you just want TV on in the background and don't want to pay anything, checkout "Pluto TV" and "Tubi TV", both have apps and may cast to Chromecast or SmartTVs.

https://pluto.tv/

https://tubitv.com/

Friends help friends cut cords.

Does OTA not work where you're at?

Yeah, OTA doesn't really work anywhere except cities. I used to sell "big screens" at Sears and I was asked that question so frequently, especially back when cable was switching from analog to digital. Years 2004-2006.

I live 40 miles outside of a major city. Even back in analog days with a big antenna I couldn't pick anything up; there's a hill that blocks all the signals between me and the city.

Eventually I got cable but dropped it a couple years ago.

A surprisingly decent US government provided resource to check that: https://www.fcc.gov/media/engineering/dtvmaps

Edit: One thing to double check that surprised me is that the channel number these days doesn't reliably tell you if the channel is VHF or UHF. That is, a low-numbered channel like "3" or "8" could really be a UHF channel. I guess they let them keep long-established channel numbers for marketing purposes. So check what you really need before buying an antenna. The website above does provide the needed detail under "RF Channel".

Pluto TV is a godsend. So much stuff on there. I've been recommending it to people for a while now. You can also get it on Kodi[0].

[0]: https://kodi.tv/addons/matrix/plugin.video.plutotv

No kidding. My wife lamented that she couldn't see the original (modulo dubbing) Iron Chef... and poof, now there's a Pluto TV channel running nothing but that.

I suspect the appeal of YouTube TV is the built-in cloud DVR, mostly so you can skip commercials. I had YouTube TV for a while, mostly for local news. I switched to a local tuner/antenna with a DVR. I picked the Tablo product. The app could be better, but it does reliably record my local news and playback works fine. And it's quite a lot cheaper than YouTube TV, Sling, etc.

Though, of course, you have to be somewhere where an antenna can pick up what you want to watch.

How is this legal? Do Pluto and Tubitv have some contract with providers that allows this?

I remember a company named Aereo being sued out of existence because they were offering OTA TV to their subscribers by allocating an micro antenna to each user. The excuse did fly in court.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aereo

BTW, thanks for sharing!

Yes they own license to broadcast, formed by legacy media companies.

They don’t run the channels you would get on cable. They are special OTT chanels and are ad supported.

You won’t get live sports or networks, but you will get a lot of reruns shows, second run movies, and news coverage that is a few hours old.

Pluto operates a model called FAST (free ad supported television). Because the content is still aired in a linear fashion (as opposed to on demand) the licensing costs are lower than it would be for VOD and there’s no infrastructure costs to support like traditional cable tv, they can support it with ads easily enough.

They don’t have regular channels and instead do all their own programming. You get things like “The Bob Vila Channel” and other channels that focus on library/long tail content.

Pluto has both "live" TV and on demand. The on demand material is essentially the libraries for specific channels.

Pluto TV is owned by ViacomCBS and Tubi is owned by the Fox Corporation (the non-Disney one), and as others have pointed out, all their content is licensed. There's also Xumo, owned by Comcast. Pluto TV has partnership deals with Roku, Vizio and others to provide them with content for their branded apps. Amazon has a somewhat similar service with IMDb TV, although it has a crappy interface modeled off Amazon Prime's. And of course even Plex has now (sadly) entered the game with their "Live TV" section.

What annoys me about these free offerings is that they have cannibalized their content from paid streaming services. Before, services like Hulu and Amazon Prime would stock their catalog with tons of old "classic" TV shows that you could binge commercial free. Now, the only way to stream many of those shows is with commercials, they are no longer available as part of any paid commercial-free packages, unless you are willing to purchase the individual episodes.

I guess buying a TV antenna isn't completely free but it gives you the same benefit as these online channels, doesn't consume your data cap, and lets you watch sports and local news.

I bought a $10 antenna from channel master and it's been a great investment.

To be fair, there's plenty of places, even in suburbs, where you need a $100-$200 antenna, and maybe $200 worth of parts, labor and stuff to put it somewhere where it works.

Got perfect reception with a $40 antenna strapped to beams in the attic using bungee cords. The towers are only 50 miles from the house so ymmv

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0024R4B5C/

Wow, these look great. Don't need to sign up, and they don't even use EME. Have they been around for awhile?

I would recommend plex ( https://plex.tv) over both of these, since you can watch movies/tv you and your friends download in addition to free tv

Also https://www.xumo.tv.

And a lot of people forget, there is OTA TV too. In the days of streaming everything media, there are still OTA sources just in case. Especially during a power outage, where AM/FM and broadcast TV still work to receive info.

It's less about forgetfulness and more about convenience. The whole "setup an OTA antenna somewhere in/on your house/attic/roof, wire it up to your tuner, scan for channels, learn what direction to point the antenna for which stations, find a DVR that supports OTA", vs load an app, sign in and boom.

I'm a geek so, I'd LOVE to take this step. Unfortunately, I live in the part of the country that has too many mountains to make OTA reception an easy task. I personally live down between two ridges that make it so I'd have to have an antenna 150 feet in the air.

And, assuming you haven't personally experienced OTA post-digital transition in your house in the past (assuming you own a house) or have neighbors with an antenna, spend some money and a fair bit of effort to discover that reception is non-existent/bad.

I was SUPER into OTA and FTA satellite reception a little over 10 years ago. I was all over antennaweb and tvfool right before I moved out West. I went from a very flat Southeastern geography to mountains and ridges everywhere. But even then, that was a "in the know" thing. I'd hate to be one of those people who pours money into this just to discover bad reception.

Those are free alright but alllow me to recommend

magistv

It offers everything that's on star/hbo/netflix/hulu/disney plus/amazon/etc plus live sports plus a lot of live hd channels for just 9 a month.

So... paid piracy...

I was using Justwatch[0] for a 2017 series and saw I could stream it for free on the Roku Channel[1]. That was a surprise to me, and Roku Channel has some quality stuff, rotating through month by month. In addition, they show some commercials, but with a nice UI feature: a timer in the upper left that shows exactly how long the ads will play. That is a new feature to me. I wish all commercials came with a countdown timer like that.

[0] https://www.justwatch.com/us

[1] https://www.justwatch.com/us/provider/the-roku-channel

> We’re sorry, but Pluto TV is currently unavailable in your location. We’re working hard to bring Pluto TV to this area, so stay tuned to find out when.

I resubscribed to YouTube TV a few months ago for two channels: CNBC and ESPN. The rest of my family doesn't watch anything on it which is why I had cancelled it a couple of years ago. CNBC isn't worth $50/month to me. I'll give them another week before changing anything as I imagine someone is going to bend with this being college bowl season.

For what it’s worth they are reducing their pricing by $15 while they figure it out.

The cable provider / content provider dispute playbook:

1. Cease broadcasting / licensing of content

2. Talk to media to patiently explain how your adversary is responsible for depriving you of your precious {sports team | Marvel hero}

3. Hope ensuing social media / support queue shit storm hurts your adversary more than you (by the looks of these comments, advantage Disney)

4. Sign a deal

5. Repeat at next contract!

Google has handled themselves better than the content providers in past disputes, and the providers typically fold. I think Google has garnered goodwill by proactively reducing their prices etc.

Great… all the shows my kid watched just got removed from the DVR.

Even if they make a deal tomorrow, we had so much recorded that just disappeared.

Going to be lots of crying kids in the morning

Sling keeps the recordings even if you don’t have the channel anymore.

Though, quality of recordings is lower and we had some random losses over time.

I absolutely cannot stand the way these TV providers continually try to rope their customers into their disputes. This happened when I had directv, it happened when I had comcast, it happens now with YoutubeTV.

I would never in a million years, as a business owner, message one of my clients and blame a vendor for bad service and want them to help solve the dispute.

I just do not get the thought process here. "Well, these people are paying us a ton of money every month and we're just swimming in profits. Lets ask those same customers to try to get us a better deal for us with Disney so that we'll be more profitable!

No.

> I would never in a million years, as a business owner, message one of my clients and blame a vendor for bad service and want them to help solve the dispute.

If you were re-selling a vendor's product and the vender raised their prices (to you) by, say, 50%: you'd be silly not to explain to your customers what happened.

Disney is both a content provider for these channels, and is a competitor to YTTV. It probably wins either way here.

Those channels should be in a separate tier to clearly represent the cost. Instead they rely on required package deals that subsidize their insane costs. More plans need a disney- tier

Well, I don't really care for Disney. I am happy to save $15 per month. Not a lot of money, yet it is when you consider that we never really watch the channels we are losing. In other words, we are not going to mis anything. Disney is doing us a favor.

One way I interpret this is that Disney is trying to muscle everyone by using their content. They'd rather it be available exclusively by subscription to their streaming service. For some reason all of these companies think everyone has $50 per month to throw their way. Most people can't subscribe to five or six streaming services simultaneously. Even if you could, how much TV do you watch? Is that a good use of time and money?

I love watching soccer, I tried different services (fubo, paramount plus, espn+, youtube TV) and YouTube TV is by far the best in streaming quality, I also like how you can force a specific resolution in youtube tv, unlike other apps which determine the quality of streaming themselves, I have 500mpbs connection and espn and fubo are streaming 480p content half of the time.

Every time one of these conflicts happens I wish both sides had to publicly state their wants and demands for continued service.

Think it’s worrying that YouTube hasn’t realized they’re the disruptor and actually have more value in a lot of people, especially young peoples minds than Disney properties.

I don’t see this as a space them worth burning the money to compete in. Makes more sense to invest that back in their own platform, even with their budgets lack of focus can be damaging.

But they, like Sling before and T-Mobile after them, have claimed to disrupt Cable TV while basically just offering Cable TV.

The only difference is that you're now responsible for maintaining your own streaming equipment.

A one time $50 purchase of a device is a much better deal than paying $10-$20 monthly rent per box from 2009 that also uses $50 in electricity per year because the power button only cuts video output.

YoutubeTV is $65 a month

I'm referring to

>The only difference is that you're now responsible for maintaining your own streaming equipment.

Losing those box fees, HD fee, regulatory recovery fee, etc. nets one a savings even if the advertised monthly price is the same. Being able to self-install is also worth a day of PTO.

One of the things I always thought Copyright law needed was some kind of FRAND style provisions, if we as a society give an owner exclusive rights we should require that owner (if the choose to distribute the work) to do is in a non-exclusionary, fair manner.

This is some weird corporate game theory at play. Signing a deal is the ideal outcome for Disney, Google and all their mutual customers, but in pursuit of that extra dollar both sides shoot themselves in the foot and end up with nothing.

I think Disney is hoping it’ll drive people to sign up for Disney+ which cuts out the middleman at the cost of not being able to channel surf but instead opening an app.

Disney+ doesn't have live sports.

Yes it does: https://www.disneyplus.com/welcome/disney-hulu-espn-bundle

No, it doesn't. ESPN ≠ ESPN+

Live sports on ESPN isn't typically on ESPN+.

Yes, Disney+ bundle has live sports. Read the site:

> Stream live sports and exclusive originals on ESPN+

> Thousands of live events

> With movies, TV shows, and live sports, there's something for everyone.

They say it 3 times.

Maybe OC meant to say Disney+ doesn’t include ESPN, that would be a true statement. Or maybe they meant to say Disney+ doesn’t include major live sports events, but that wasn’t the claim.

Saying Disney+ doesn’t have live sports is an inaccurate claim. They do in fact offer live sports if you read their offering.

Hulu Live has the ESPN channels, but I don't think there's a bundle with that and Disney+.

Edit: I'm mistaken. https://www.hulu.com/live-tv#bundle_details

I should have clarified, ESPN+ isn't a replacement for ESPN. It is an extension. ESPN+ gets the live games that aren't being played on the ESPN network of channels.

Disney doesn't want you to drop your cable package for ESPN+.

ESPN+ generally has the less popular teams and sports that aren't worth putting on the cable ESPN channels (ESPN, ESPN@, ESPNU, etc.)

Disney owns Hulu, which does have Live sports

I feel like YoutubeTV forgot that at the end of the day, I’m paying them for content, not their cute little app. Left them last year when they lost my MLB team and haven’t really looked back.

And I'm sure you'd also complain when it's "Youtube wants $15 more a month to carry my MLB channels(/ESPN/ABC/whatever)!" like they might end up doing now?

Disney: No thanks, no deal and no ESPN for You(Tube).

You simply need more of this for YouTube to listen these days instead of them banning its own users and creators.

Just look at this typical ESPN fan:

> “I will cancel immediately if you can’t work a deal,”

The same will happen for Disney fans watching on YouTube and it is working. They'll just run to the Disney+ app instead.

I doubt Youtube/Google cares that much. It's not really youtubes core business, more of a side gig for a set of products (cable channels) which frankly are in the process of dying.

Disagree. I think YouTubeTV is a trial balloon for YouTube, an attempt to join the Netflix/Prime/streaming world.

They piggybacked off of cable the way Netflix piggybacked off of rentals.

Sports streaming is a massive point of disruption that's happening at a very small scale but I suspect we'll see more of it as these types of deals fizzle out.

I doubt it. If that's where they wanted to go, they've missed the window for it already. There's already too many streaming services like Netflix and consumers are already annoyed navigating them all. Plus they don't have the content and probably can't get the content because they'd be competing against Netflix, Disney, Apple, HBO and the other legacy media conglomerates all trying to do the same thing.

There’s little loyalty in the streaming world to platforms. Like Peacock appeared one day, has The Office, so tons of people said “sure”. I don’t think the timing is as important as the content. If you have stuff people want to watch they’ll come.

Disney+ is another example of this.

Derided prior to launch in late 2019 as having missed the boat, it's a massive force now.

Same with HBO Max, which added even more user hostile behavior, but ... they have their content so it's working.

What's user hostile about HBO Max? The app seems to work fine, it's untethered from a cable provider, and it's simple to stream it to an Apple TV (or an Apple TV app).

Their Android TV app on my Shield TV is a tire fire. It's really the only reason I haven't committed to a full year discount. I'm not sure how much longer I want to deal with it.

The service itself and the way they handled existing accounts through other services.

The plug was pulled rather abruptly

I guess I had already dropped cable well before I resubscribed through HBO Max.

Not just cable, other streaming options including through Prime.

It’s a giant game of Go.

Anything that hamper's Google's continued effort to turn youtube into the new cable TV is good in my book. I hope they lose all the other channels too, and then I hope those channels die anyway, along with the old-media companies that own them. A pipe dream, I know.

> Anything that hamper's Google's continued effort to turn youtube into the new cable TV is good in my book.

You confused YouTube and YouTube TV, these are fully separate items despite its name.

I'm not. I know exactly what Youtube TV is and want it to fail. Was that not clear from my obvious desire to see TV die in general?

But Google aren’t turning YouTube into TV. YouTube TV is a separate product.

If I go to YouTube.com, they try to upsell me on YouTube TV. It's pretty clear what they are trying to do in terms of market motion.

The same company runs them. Your definition of "fully separate" has a wide berth.

Why do you care if I enjoy a product from a company? Is my enjoyment of it harming you in some way?

I am subjected to televisions in public places like airports and waiting rooms. I have family members that turn the TV on whenever we meet up for the holidays. Friends, family and coworkers who can scarcely talk about anything other than television. Television has permeated American society for my entire life, and decades before that. I'm entitled to have an opinion on this shit, I'm not obliged to withhold my criticism for any reason. Thankfully younger generations care less about it, so I have hope that I might live to see the day that it becomes socially irrelevant. When efforts of the television industry to get young people hooked fall through, as they have in this instance, you can bet I'm going to gloat about it.

Just because they're less likely to watch broadcast TV or a cable bundle, I'd be very surprised if younger people today were actually watching less video (both with and without advertising) than in years past. Now, if they're deliberately choosing what to watch rather than just watching whatever is on, that is probably a good thing overall, but television as an episodic format is probably as big as ever.

Why does it make a difference to you if people watch television versus streaming on Netflix/etc

Is this mostly just about who’s got a bigger … ?

...revenue stream.

sidenote, every streaming service I paid for I did so willingly and excitedly. youtube is more expensive and feels more like coercion.

Maybe all content creators around the world should form a union to fight against the big platforms.

At the moment, any individual content creator is just a little xitch when it comes to the power relationship.

All the YouTube creators, all the Apple App Store developers, all the Xbox developers etc.

> Maybe all content creators around the world should form a union to fight against the big platforms.

Hmmm sounds like an illegal cartel.

Yeah, the small-time content creator called Disney definitely needs help to fight the big guys.

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