[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-...