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

latimes.com

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

#121

Post by bjornlouser »

tyingq wrote: post #89
managerclass wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

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

#122

Post by awb »

jayknight wrote: post #87
awb wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

#123

Post by ssharp »

ghaff wrote: post #100
saxonww wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 vario…

>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…

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.

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

#124

Post by rp1 »

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.

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

#125

Post by tomrod »

saxonww wrote: post #96
adamcstephens wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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 vario…

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.

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

#126

Post by mcot2 »

dreyfan wrote: post #108
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 T…

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.

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.

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

#127

Post by mcot2 »

ghaff wrote: post #119
dreyfan wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 document…

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

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

#128

Post by cptskippy »

heartbreak wrote: post #26

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 whic…

> 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.

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

#129

Post by BrazzVuvuzela »

VikingCoder wrote: post #75
BrazzVuvuzela wrote: post #16

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.

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.

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

#130

Post by ghaff »

zippergz wrote: post #105
adregan wrote: post #91

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; so…

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…

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.
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