Cord Cutters Finally Having an impact

[lupi]

On ESPN. Seems the highest non-pay channel is one of the few examples of the "movement" affecting budgets.


http://finance.yahoo.com/news/theres-serious-cost-cutting-going-142652796.html

 

[vi edit]

Good. Fuck ESPN and their tearing away of games that used to be available OTA. That includes Monday night football and as of this year NFL playoff games. I hope people wise up to the college sports network channels to and give them the finger. Local games that used to be locally televised on OTA channels now got sucked into Big 10 & SEC networks. It's a horrible trend.

Voting with your wallet is the only way that this stuff is going to get better.

 

[smackababy]

Perhaps, ESPN is finally feeling the effects of "nobody gives a shit about sports center on 24/7" and the constant hyping of silly things like drafts?

Paid cable has been rather stead at market penetration for decades. Cord cutters aren't having much of an effect, as of yet.

 

[Banana]

Professional sports performers will have to settle for $19,000,000 per year instead of $20,000,000.

 

[NuclearNed]

ESPN is essential for me during football season, but other times of the year... meh. If, as the article says, ESPN tries launching a $30/month standalone service, you can bet I *won't* be a subscriber. It just isn't worth that much for me.

 

[z1ggy]

Good.

 

[Blackjack200]

Good. I refuse to participate in this bullshit until it's all unbundled. I love hockey but haven't watched Devils games in years. I'll happily pay to watch Devils games for a competitive price that bundles nothing else. I'm not holding my breath though.

 

[TwiceOver]

Happy that I only watch football and only my "local" team even though we don't have a team. I couldn't imagine having cable just for sports.

OTA, YAY!

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

For the love of fuck, please don't have them go solo like HBO/Showtime are doing with their bullshit $15/month to stream them.

Seriously. $15/month to stream O-N-E channel. Get the fuck out of here. As much as a 'la carte is the prefered system, we want it ALL UNDER ONE SYSTEM. I don't want to have to go on my PS3 and go to the "Netflix" app, load Netflix, login, see if anything good is on... Nothing good on, let's go to the Showtime app and see if anything good is on there. Nope. Nothing good there. Let's load the ESPN app and see if anything good is on there....

I was very happy when they joined the Dish SlingTV - it showed progress for unbundling all the crap channels. I think that is part of the problem with cable companies - THEY are the ones that need to cut costs. You don't have enough viewers that watch cooking channels and crap to justify its existence. It's stupid. It's a waste. Get rid of it and replace the "All-day cooking channel" with a cooking show or two on a local channel.

I cut the cord quite a while ago, haven't looked back - and I haven't signed up for some stupid streaming service yet either.

 

[NoTine42]

Good. Fuck ESPN and their tearing away of games that used to be available OTA. That includes Monday night football and as of this year NFL playoff games. I hope people wise up to the college sports network channels to and give them the finger. Local games that used to be locally televised on OTA channels now got sucked into Big 10 & SEC networks. It's a horrible trend.

Voting with your wallet is the only way that this stuff is going to get better.

It was also Steinbrenner leading the capitalization of TV rights. By creating his own YES network, he essentially issued a monthly household Yankees "tax" on every household in their baseball viewing area.

And Delaney, the Big 10 commish loved that idea, tax every house in B1G states? (Why else do you think they added Rutgers?). So this becomes more than a TV cost talk and now a sports league alignment issue, too.

 

[KeithP]

Cord Cutters Finally Having an impact

Clearly ESPN has been loosing viewers although I wonder what percentage of those losses are because of cord cutters. I guessing the number is smaller than you would guess. And compared to ESPN's other problems, Cord Cutters are probably the least of their worries.

-KeithP

 

[isekii]

Their analysts/commentators if you can call them that are some of the worst. I only watch it when live games are on and even then if it's on my local affiliate~ I'll watch it on that (YES) with Ian Eagle.

 

[kt]

Good. I refuse to participate in this bullshit until it's all unbundled. I love hockey but haven't watched Devils games in years. I'll happily pay to watch Devils games for a competitive price that bundles nothing else. I'm not holding my breath though.

NHL Gamecenter, or Hockey Streams?

 

[Captante]

Cut the cord over a year ago and frankly don't miss it one bit except as mentioned by others during the NFL season/playoffs.

Baseball is fine on the radio for free in my opinion.

 

[lupi]

Clearly ESPN has been loosing viewers although I wonder what percentage of those losses are because of cord cutters. I guessing the number is smaller than you would guess. And compared to ESPN's other problems, Cord Cutters are probably the least of their worries.

-KeithP

On just about every cable system ESPN is on, it's part of lowest tier except for those that offer a local channel rebroadcast only package, so ESPN viewer numbers would be a close proximity to actual cable viewers.

 

[mizzou]

I honestly really miss ESPN network for specifically just their exclusive broadcasting rights to college sports games. This seems so strange to me, that teams might have publicly broadcasted games, FOX sports broadcasted games, and ESPN broadcasted games. The only thing that is guaranteed with every game is a Radio broadcasted game.

When I cut the cord, I lost everything except public broadcasted coverage. It sucks, but it's not the end of the world and makes it easier on my wallet. It's hard justifying $100 or whatever a month just to catch some games.

I really don't care about their analysis or their funny shticks, I just want to watch my games!

 

[Blackjack200]

NHL Gamecenter, or Hockey Streams?

GameCenter blacks out your local games, and bundles all the other games. It's almost a perfect opposite of the package I would want to buy.

Streams are illicit. I don't really do that stuff anymore. There was a time when I signed up for GameCenter and did some things with my internet connection that let me watch the local feeds and also got me banned on this forum when I talked about it, but that experience also reminded me of the other problem I have with streaming content. Shitty internet service. Until Google fiber brings actual competition to my area, I'd just be paying $180 for a grainy, choppy, unreliable steam.

 

[Blackjack200]

On just about every cable system ESPN is on, it's part of lowest tier except for those that offer a local channel rebroadcast only package, so ESPN viewer numbers would be a close proximity to actual cable viewers.

That's true, but the article said they're losing viewers, not subscribers. They're still getting their $6 for those people that aren't watching anymore, but they lose ad revenue and lose some pricing leverage with the cable providers.

 

[BlitzPuppet]

I'm still baffled that sports athletes get paid the money they do. Lol at ESPN having to pay $1.4 BILLION to show NBA games. That is an insane amount of money there.

 

[lupi]

And to just ROFL at this entire situation, we have.....http://www.ibtimes.com/bernie-sande...-cable-tv-bill-too-high-they-want-fcc-2003592

Now I wonder how it is possible that bills got so high, could it be perhaps that the government allowed the OTA channels to begin the arm and leg process of charging rebroadcast fees such that now the main networks are more interested in cable subscriber revenue than traditional ad fees. Nope, couldn't possibly what happened.

That's true, but the article said they're losing viewers, not subscribers. They're still getting their $6 for those people that aren't watching anymore, but they lose ad revenue and lose some pricing leverage with the cable providers.

The Journal reports that ESPN has lost 3.2 million subscribers in over a year

 

[gorcorps]

Is the Slingbox still a thing? I remember years ago it sounded like really cool technology. You can plug in a cable feed to it and it'll transmit it over the internet, so I could watch my local Colorado games via my parents house over the internet anywhere else. I kind of figured the cable companies figured out how to ruin that, but maybe not.

That's all I really want, to be able to get local coverage in another location. If Comcast would offer a way to get the exact same programming I got in Colorado where I live now, I would subscribe again in a heartbeat.

 

[Blackjack200]

The Journal reports that ESPN has lost 3.2 million subscribers in over a year

Wow, WTF, I could have sworn I read "viewers". :\

 

[lupi]

I'm still baffled that sports athletes get paid the money they do. Lol at ESPN having to pay $1.4 BILLION to show NBA games. That is an insane amount of money there.

They basically get a 50/50 split with the owners in just about every current NA CBA for the major sports. So the owners must raise 2X dollars for them to take X dollars to be shared among the owner pool. On top of that, some of the networks like ESPN/TNT use their live sport viewer numbers as a way to bolster their transmission rates among the cable carriers.

 

[mmntech]

Good. Fuck ESPN and their tearing away of games that used to be available OTA. That includes Monday night football and as of this year NFL playoff games. I hope people wise up to the college sports network channels to and give them the finger. Local games that used to be locally televised on OTA channels now got sucked into Big 10 & SEC networks. It's a horrible trend.

Voting with your wallet is the only way that this stuff is going to get better.

They did the same thing with NHL coverage here in Canada. CBC lost the contract and it went over to Sportsnet, who's owned by Rogers Cable. Rogers puts very few games now on their OTA stations. Of course they tried to dick around Don Cherry. That didn't end well for the cable company.

Problem here in Canada is we have very few streaming options. Bell and Rogers have their own services, which require a cable sub. We don't officially get Hulu or Amazon Instant Video. Just Netflix.

 

[GrumpyMan]

If I start paying $10.00 or so for ESPN, HBO, Showtime, Netflix, Amazon, etc. then I'm back up to the $150.00 that I used to pay Comcast...................no. And they ruined Monday Night Football for me, haven't watched that since they've moved it so F'em.