[tcskeptic]

Interesting -- this weekend I finally gave up on YoutubeTV and ordered Spectrum cable again. Between the rising costs (now 69.95 a month) and the loss of both regional sports networks (I haven't been able to watch Texas Rangers baseball or Mavericks basketball in almost a year since they dropped the Fox Sports RSNs) and the Tennis channel the package is worth much less to me. The only real reason I want cable is for live sports. All the other network programming is of very little interest to me.

My total cost for a competitive package with CloudDVR (what used to be YoutubeTVs killer feature) and 400Mbps internet is now lower by about 30 bucks a month, which is not nothing.

I live in hope that one day I will be able to buy a cable/streaming package that consists of Sports plus Local Channels with cloud DVR and very high bitrate streaming. That is all that I want.

[Terretta]

They should let us pair up and split bundles. All I want is a package that’s all available global news, and zero sports.

Looking at the individual channel costs for cable, sports is the culprit. Over half my cable costs were subsidizing live sports, costing my provider $8 - $12 per channel, with home/garden, food, and news type channels coming in under a buck each.

It’s aggressive for streaming video packages to price near cable when not offering sports. For those who watch sports, that’s a terrible deal. For those who don’t want sports, streaming is starting to cross into charging more than cable would charge for the same not-sports channels (if they have a not-sports package). That said, if the streaming price is also “ad free” and fully time shiftable, that’s huge value. (They seem to be messing this up too, a higher percentage of shows on Hulu’s no ads keep having ads every year, now not just pre-roll, now interleaved and unskippable — TiVo can skip. Had donated TiVO Series 2 w/ 2 TB expansion to Good Will but might have to get another if this trend continues.)

After two decades of no ads (TiVo then Hulu ad free), traveling and being stuck with home or hotel cable is excruciating.

[derivagral]

In my region of the US, sports were literally subsidized by the cable bill. You paid an extra itemized fee for the privilege of regional sports programming even if you never turned your TV on. This is part of why I ended up going full internet, but due to bundling discounts the savings were not actually that impressive.

I wonder if we'll get a similar institution demanding something from our ISP bills. You can see the slow decline of ESPN[0] as it gets eaten by the internet, and I'm curious what'll happen as the money pie in that vertical decreases and how it affects professional leagues.

[0] https://nextlevel.finance/updated-espn-subscribers-and-espn-...

[solosoyokaze]

I don't watch sports but do enjoy cooking, travel and home shows (don't judge me!). I also did not like paying a huge monthly fee for mostly channels I don't watch. I've actually found Discovery+ to be a really great deal as it has Discovery, Food, Travel and HGTV content all bundled and on-demand for $5 a month. It's all of the content I wanted and was paying > $60 /month for, with no commercials and on-demand. It's a pretty great deal if you like this kind of content.

[lotsofpulp]

I had a family member that was in a Discovery show recently, so I decided to sign up to Discovery+ watch just to see my family member.

Lo and behold, discovery+ does not stream the episodes they put on tv channels until the year after or something stupid. Luckily, I had a free trial so I just canceled at no cost, but they lost any chance of getting me in the future by gate keeping their content like that.

[solosoyokaze]

Ah that's unfortunate, I didn't know they were gating content like that. It's still a pretty good deal though, certainly better than bundled cable, and most of the content on these stations is pretty evergreen.

[Terretta]

Exactly! Discovery plus a global news package would be ideal.

Only streamer with decent selection of global news in a skinny-ish package seems to be Sling, but what you describe would be ideal.

[solosoyokaze]

I would love to see local news (minus commercials). I'd definitely pay $5 a month for that.

[Terretta]

Curiously, many (I don't know the percentage, only the stations I worked with in the past) local news broadcasts have additional segments during the time slots for commercial breaks. If the commercial isn't airing, it's a segment.

Same is true of national news. If the commercial doesn't run, there's other (semi-throwaway) content. Same is true for national news during the weather segment, local news can splice in a local weather and if they don't, it's national or regional weather.

Because of this, they should be able to sell the non-overlay version with content instead of ads. Sure it's throwaway content, but at least it's not yelling at you to buy things.

[rashkov]

Have a look at fubo. I was researching this to help a family member cut the cord, and fubo's elite package seems to be the only one that provides great coverage for sports. AT&T TV NOW seemed to be promising as well, but my impression was that their app may be a little janky and their channel coverage not quite as good, for about the same price.