From this TidBITS review of YouTube TV by Josh Centers:
Along with most of the channels you’d expect, such as ESPN, Fox News, and MSBNC, YouTube TV has just added Turner networks, including Adult Swim, Cartoon Network, CNN, TBS, and TNT. It will also soon offer NBA TV and MLB Network.
Which channels you want is highly personal, but here are a few notable channels that are missing: BET, Food Network, Hallmark, MTV, and Nickelodeon.
And from this YouTube TV support document:
FOX has not secured the rights to NFL games on its national feed, FOXNet. Users in Albuquerque, Austin, Birmingham, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Denver, Grand Rapids, Greensboro, Greenville (South Carolina), Harrisburg, Hartford, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Norfolk, Portland, Raleigh, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, San Diego, Seattle, St. Louis, and West Palm Beach will not see NFL games on FOX.
Every cord cutting package I’ve seen so far has holes like this. With cable, you pay a lot more, typically (but not always) have to make a long term commitment, get a lot of stuff you don’t want, but pretty much can get everything you want, as long as you are willing to pay for it.
Ideally, at least for me, the market will devolve to the point where you can build a package that has every element you want, but leave off (and not pay for) things you’ll never consume.
My two cents: Once that sort of package becomes affordable, one of two things will happen. Either the companies that deliver internet will throttle packages they don’t own and make the experience untenable, or cable prices will come down to keep customers and become competitive again.
Its a damn mess out there. Nobody has quality solution. Been trying Hulu live stream for the past couple of months and its mediocre at best. Once the Olympics are over I’m cancelling the service and subscribing a al carte where I can.
Good post. It really is a mess at the moment with nothing in sight that will make it much better. I was really hoping Apple had a plan on all of this but it seems they gave up or never really had one.
We have cable TV because it’s part of a “triple play” package with our cable provider that works for us but the only thing we watch on it is the PBS NewsHour which should be live streamed on the PBS app in the same time frame but it’s not and that really pisses me off (we pay for PBS Passport hoping that the NewsHour will stream in real time but it doesn’t).
I’m glad we never bought the premium stuff through our cable provider: we get HBO and Showtime through Apple TV/iTunes and were already getting Netflix and Amazon Prime that way.
An HD antenna fills news and live sports gap for a lot of people.
We cut about 15 years ago. Now, all these years later, we have a new problem. Deciding which subscriptions to ditch based on a certain amount of overlap, such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.
Content has value. Regardless of how the market arranges itself, I very much doubt content owners’ ability to extract rents will diminish. On the contrary, additional complexity in the market will probably lead to just the opposite, as it has in the airline industry, for example, with the unbundling of airline fees.
My guess is we will continue to have a choice between fragmented bundles of bundles that leave stuff out, or traditional cable or satellite; and that 1) satellite/cable prices will not come down, and 2) the bundles of bundles approach will instead get more expensive over time. If we ever get true a la carte pricing it will be more expensive, not less.
“Once that sort of package becomes affordable…. cable prices will come down to keep customers and become competitive again.”
I think you are overlooking one of the key benefits of non-cable solutions: never having to worry about the schedule. Even if cable TV was 100% free, we would never switch back because we are enjoying the benefits of being able to watch things when we want to watch them. (The benefits of seeing things without commercials is also a big factor but not every non-cable service is commercial free, sadly).
Except that something like 50% of the cost of bundle pricing is for sports, which not everyone watches, and which many people like to watch with friends rather than alone.
Unbundling sports content from the standard package and making it a separate purchase would massively reduce the prices of typical bundles.
I don’t think it’s anywhere near 50% in a basic cable plan, and I expect any savings would be small in reality because, again, owners and intermediaries will find a way to capture most of the benefit if one were to exist.
Vive l’antenna! We had cable for about a year, then the dot-com bubble hit and one of us was laid off. Haven’t gone back since.
Netflix and Prime are two of the three streaming services we pay for (CBS All Access while there’s new Star Trek, and PBS Passport was included in a year-end donation, but we hardly use it). I find that Netflix and Prime have their own original work that we consider worth maintaining access to. And a good bit of other new stuff finds its way to one or the other after a couple of years, if we’re patient.
I don’t see cable prices ever coming down, regardless of the competition.
Or maybe Apple had a plan, but nobody would get on board because it would require too much of a change in approach for the market.
The current mess is much easier for the market to handle, as it changes very little.
I think its too much of a mess for even Apple to fix alone. And why should they? I don’t see the incentive for Apple as a corporation.
Apple would basically need to become an ISP, or buy one, and have control over the delivery. Then establish deals with all the networks, as well as the content owners. Who are unlikely to partner with Apple if they create a model exclusive to Apple that will disrupt the industry. Steve Jobs was spot on when describing the challenges with fixing television.
It’s like the line from the original Jurassic Park: “Life finds a way.” Well, so do cable companies.
I agree with everything you say, including that it’s too much of a mess for Apple to get involved.
I was hoping that maybe, someday, they’d own some kind of geosynchronous satellite network and we’d all be online all the time, including steaming video but of course, that has nothing to do with owning content.
Sigh.
The good news is, there’s plenty of great content to be had, it’s just a pain to deal with the various subscriptions necessary to get it. Apple’s attempt to centralize this with TV seems pretty weak to me but maybe I’m just using it wrong.
Great comment. Time shifting is a huge deal. People still buy and use Tivos but no doubt non-cable solutions are biting into Tivo sales.
I agree about the stickiness of original programming. It’s a huge elephant in the room as far as this topic goes. (Peaky Blinders, you know.)
Another driver is the ability to drop in and buy or rent programming, including sports events like the Tour de France, etc, to say nothing of iTunes content.
We find that I’ve occasionally missed the premiere of something I very much want to see right away, so I’ll usually buy one episode on iTunes.
Maybe. We don’t hear very much from the extinct species that succumbed to their own cultural myopia. The world of large corporations certainly resists learning those lessons.
I wonder if, when cord cutting hits some tipping point, we’ll see major content creators like the sports leagues do deals directly with streaming providers. After all, the only reason this happens is that Fox is in the middle (in this example). What if I could signup for an all NFL package on my streaming provider (Sling, in my case)?
That would require different deals between the NFL and Fox (and in general between the content provider and network) but the power of the networks seems to lessen if enough of us cord cut.
I just googled, and it’s around 20%. It’s definitely the biggest single chunk. As sports costs keep rising and as more people seek ways to reduce their financial insecurity, i think the demand to unbundle sports is going to rise. Paying that much per month for the ability to watch live sports alone at home is going to erode in popularity.
Source: http://time.com/money/4590614/cable-bill-sports-cord-cutting-streaming/
Time shifting can be jury-rigged on a regular cable subscription using a dvr, but it’s built in to all non-cable alternatives I am aware of (other than an antenna).
Not having to deal with the care and feeding of a tivo in order to get time shifting is a huge benefit to cord cutting.
More competition in the TV business will indeed lower prices to some extent.
But so many people think that à la carte pricing will save them a bunch of money, and that regulators should demand that cable companies offer it. But that’s not how it works.
If you buy one donut instead of a dozen, it will be much cheaper. Maybe not 1/12 the price, but still much less. That’s because the cost of providing you with donuts is largely proportional to the number of donuts you get.
You think, “I pay $60 per month for 120 channels. But I only watch 10 channels, so you should let me pay $5 a month, and I’ll only get those 10 channels.” But why? It doesn’t matter how many channels you watch, or how many different shows you watch, or how many times you watch them. The only things that cost money is producing the shows and running the wire to your house.
The actual reason cable companies offer different tiers is price discrimination. People vary by their desire for TV and their ability to pay. Without tiers, the company can either charge a low price and get lots of customers, or charge more and get fewer customers. But a tiered structure lets them get more. They offer to block off some channels in exchange for a lower price to get the less enthusiastic customers to still pay something. They do it by channels instead of shows because, at one time, that was the most technically feasible.
I can’t even remember the last time that I had cable. 2010?
I get the Olympics on the CBC app on Apple TV.
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