Given the writers' strike there is absolutely nothing on tv except sports and news, so paying Spectrum well over $200 per month makes no sense to me. We switched to Hulu awhile back and are quite happy with it. Took a while for my wife to get used to the streaming process but all good now. Plus Hulu is portable from one location to another which is a big plus.
This isn’t just about ESPN. It’s about Disney forcing multiple channels onto spectrum. You can’t just add ESPN, you have to get almost all the channels serviced by Disney. No matter how you cut it, Disney is in major decline (stock at the lowest price in 9 years), park attendance down significantly, every movie they’ve put out tanked. This is 100% on disney. Screw them. They showed how much respect they have for the state of Florida!
Borrowed from another forum I frequent..... "Disney is in trouble" The company has issues in every one of its business lines and what to do with ESPN is one of the biggest. Bob Iger has said that he wants to spin off ESPN as a standalone direct-to-consumer service. Frankly, there is no way that entity can be profitable by itself without a massive increase in net revenue. They can either demand more revenue from carriers or seek concessions on package values with leagues and conferences. But that leaves them vulnerable to competitors like CBS, FOXSports and NBC. And some of those guys have streaming platforms they'd like to build. And they can undercut Disney for a year or three. And there's always Amazon, Warner Bros/Max, Netflix and YouTube TV. What to do with Hulu is another thing. Comcast (parent of NBC) has a put option on the 30% stake it owns in the service. They will execute that option this year and Comcast has the right to decline negotiations and just send the invoice. Hulu is how I watch what I used to watch on cable and DirecTV. It's nice but very pricey and going higher. Parks attendance is ok but not growing much. Films are underachieving in theaters. The company was the target last year of activist investor Nelson Peltz (current CEO of Wendy's) who demanded a seat on the board of directors when Iger was re-hired as CEO. He also demanded steep cost cuts and the firing of long-term execs. He set up a proxy fight for the company's annual shareholder meeting and started acquiring beaucoup shares and votes. He gave the stand-down order just before the vote was to happen when Iger gave up everything except the board seat for Peltz. Things are only gonna get worse. They have chosen to take sides in a hotbutton political issue that is serving to alienate about half of its customer base. Not getting into that here except to say that if some cultural or political issue in the public sphere doesn't affect your business financial results, the best response is always "no comment." Biz Comms 205... The stock (Ticker: DIS) hasn't paid a dividend since December 2019. It reached an all-time high of about $206 in early 2021 and is trading in the low $80's now. Total market cap is about $150 billion and if it gets into the $70/shr range it's an acquisition target for companies like Apple, Amazon, Microsoft... I only hammered out this long post to show that how we pay for and watch college football next season will be very, very different from next year. ESPN may be owned by someone else and who knows what it will cost to watch the sport we love so much......
You want their channels, that’s how things work. Play hardball with them and keep losing your customers. Like it or not, Disney has the power in these negotiations. It’s on both parties, but at the end of the day it’s spectrum customers that aren’t being taken care of because spectrum didn’t find a way to close the deal. They need to find them a Harvey Specter. Or maybe a Ray Donovan. Lol
Disney needs to offer a full package via streaming. Let people fed up with the cable/satellite/streaming companies decide if the Disney Sports Bundle is worth what they want to charge.
And here is the dangerous game they are all playing. Spectrum (or other providers) are trying to maximize profits, duh. But they walk a line with trying to increase their monthly fees to the people without pissing them off to go another route, namely streaming for a lot less. Content providers like Disney can just charge out the ass for their programming and then make it available only on their streaming service for a reasonable price and charge everyone one else whatever they want. This issue will only drive more people to the streaming services and once those have captured the market, those companies will start charging the same costs as the current providers.
Disney might be better off selling off ESPN to Apple, instead of spinning it off with the same ownership.
I’m thinking they must not be able to. That could be something the service providers still have some leverage on. No cable channel games available to espn+ only subscribers. I’d likely switch to that and drop my directtv stream if it was an option. I don’t really watch much live tv other than gator sports.
FYI:....this is a handy website for those interested in finding their best fit as a provider........ Suppose... you could design your perfect TV service
Last night I had 2 games on at once. Today I found out I could have 4 on at once! I'm still trying to figure everything out. Will have to watch some YT vids on it...lol.....
It's easy. Go to home Look for top picks for you Select 4 game channel. Once on the channel you can use your remote to move from game to game for audio then select one to expand to full screen and the back button to get back to multiplayer
Thanks - but I was mostly talking about how to navigate the entire system. I can manage but am accidentally going into screens I didn't want. Just gotta practice more - but also watch some tutorials.....
I know my wife was fuming the way they handled the blackout. But keep in mind that Spectrum's high speed internet cable is awesome so they aren't out of the picture even with streaming service. They get business regardless.
Man I hate spectrum but they are tempting me with their new cell service. Something like $25 a line and I’m paying like $65 a line AT&T and I don’t like them either. It’s the lesser of two evils but if y’all are happy with a company, let me know. I’ll stick with crappy for $190/mo for right now until we have a viable option
I'm looking at YouTube tv and it isn't free for two months, just discounted to $64.99 from $72.99 for the first 3 months.
I've got the cell service and I can't tell the difference from At&t. I'm paying a total of $54/month which includes my data for my apple watch.
