Disney gives us a dry hole

[AArdvark]

I don't watch sports on tv but I think there's something wrong with this

Updated: September 3, 2023

ROCHESTER, N.Y. – It’s a big weekend in sports. And if you have Spectrum, you’re mostly out of luck. That’s because Disney pulled its channels off the cable provider on Thursday night. That means you can’t watch the channels that Disney owns… and that includes ESPN.

Sunday, ESPN issued a statement, and predictably, it’s taking the side of its owner, Disney, and blaming the cable provider. The statement reads, “Although Charter [the owner of Spectrum] claims that they value their customers, they declined Disney’s offer to extend negotiations which would have kept Disney-owned networks up for consumers in the middle of perennial programming events like the U.S. Open and college football.”

Spectrum says that’s malarky. Its statement reads in part, “We offered Disney a fair deal, yet they are demanding an excessive increase.”

And while these media goliaths battle over bucks, you’re left without the programming you paid for.

Disney and Spectrum are battling over the fees that Spectrum has to pay Disney to carry its channels. That means that all 118 channels that Disney owns, including ABC and ESPN, are no longer available, just as Jessica Pegula plays in the U.S. Open and the college football season begins.

[Flack]

I was flipping channels a couple of months ago and noticed that instead of NBC, we now get a static screen informing us that we currently don't get NBC because of some price negotiations. I logging into AT&T to see what was up and it sent me to DirecTV, so I logged in there and it sent me to Nextstar, who owns the channel packages and I guess negotiates prices who says two other companies, Mission and White Knight Broadcasting, are trying to raise prices. First of all, that's way too many hoops to jump through just to find out what's going on.

I think all I care about on NBC is football and SNL. All the skits worth watching on SNL get posted to YouTube, and it looks like I'll be missing Sunday Night Football, which means I'll only get the two earlier Sunday games on CBS and FOX, Thursday night football on Prime, and Monday Night Football on ABC. So, I think that's enough football. Oh and OU college football games, which is never on NBC anyway.

These dumb channels think they're irreplaceable. We used to watch the news every day on NBC. Now we watch it on ABC. The end.

Also if we lost every single channel I wouldn't care because I have fast internet. The TV channels were just a bonus in the first place.

[AArdvark]

But our monthly payment isn't dropping and the channels are.

Know what, it's entertainment, it's not real. You're right, these channels are eating themselves out of business

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Spectrum says that’s malarky. Its statement reads in part, “We offered Disney a fair deal, yet they are demanding an excessive increase.”
And while these media goliaths battle over bucks, you’re left without the programming you paid for.

On another location, pinback mentioned that his school district was fighting with the bus drivers, so the bus drivers were on strike. Because it is local, I am not directly impacted, but my thought was, "Grow up, just give the bus drivers what they want. If it's such a sweet deal, SCHOOL ADMIN, then you go do it." Pinback notes that the bus drivers didn't want cameras and speed tracking added to the buses. I was on their side even more. Let's put a camera directly on the people advocating for bus drivers to have it if it's so great.

Same deal with this channel nonsense. We don't pay for cable or satellite TV (I have to pay for two ISPs out here, so I am not saying it's better where I live). If there is a sporting event I want to see, I just find some website with pirate connections and watch through that. But it's the same thing - figure it out. You have people paying for monopolies and giant corporate monoliths and it's all a dick measuring contest. The writer's strike has been going on for what, three? four months? Because the same kind of people have to prove they "won" somehow.

Everyone involved in this "pay for cable and then OOPS ya lose your channel!" thing ought to be forcible deported to the moon.

[Flack]

I do agree with Aardvark -- it's annoying that my bill doesn't go down 1/200th or whatever each time one of these channels gets blocked.

We were paying around $150/month for Cox Internet and another $150/month for cable television. Last year we switched to AT&T fiber, which is $100/month and faster than my old internet. The DirecTV stuff is included for free, but if you want a box to hook it up to your television you have to rent them for $5/month extra. Combined, I have more videogames, movies, albums, and books than I could consume in 100 lifetimes. Whether or not I have SNL and one extra football game in the big scheme of things is so infinitesimal.

[Tdarcos]

These streaming services "discovered" that Netflix was making a fortune from their service and thought they could move their content from some existing service to their own, and make huge amounts of money, only to discover that the reason people were willing to pay so much for the service was because of the large amount of content.

So now, they have less money because they have to pay for all the infrastructure needed to operate a streaming service, which isn't cheap, but nowhere near as much income as they expected, because they forgot one thing: they are not selling bread in Soviet Russia. It is not a necessity. This is a completely optional service people can live without and won't even notice.

There is also another thing: "subscription fatigue." People in general can only afford - or will only put up with = a small number of services each holding their hand out and expecting a tip before either they decide they're at their limit, or they have reached the amount budgeted for entertainment. It's just like when every news source wants you to subscribe or expects you to pay to look at anything. If there is one article in the Anchorage Daily Frostbite newspaper that I want to read, and I don't even live in Alaska, I'm not going to want a month's subscription to read one article. I'll live without it.

[Casual Observer]

It's just like when every news source wants you to subscribe or expects you to pay to look at anything. If there is one article in the Anchorage Daily Frostbite newspaper that I want to read, and I don't even live in Alaska, I'm not going to want a month's subscription to read one article. I'll live without it.

I'm with you on this Commander! If I'm paying almost three bills to Xfinity to deliver me content then they should make deals with the damn news sites or don't bring them to me.

And when my Prime sub goes up to $140 and Bezos still cockblocks me from The Washington Post I'll . . . do nothing and still keep paying for the free delivery cuz I'm lazy.

[AArdvark]

Yep, there are places that deliver the same news for nothing, Not going to a paywall.

[AArdvark]

Oh, they solved that issue juuuuust before Monday Night Football.

Money solves everything

[Jizaboz]

So it just occurred to me.. I don't get what "dry hole" means here.

Like.. a dry oasis? No more fish in the hole? A dry water well? Or something eh.. more adult?

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Oh, they solved that issue juuuuust before Monday Night Football.

I tried to have the game up tonight on a pirate stream.

Unwatchable. NOTHING BUT ADS. I think I checked in at one point between the third and fourth quarters. That ... that's a 2 minute ad break. It was at least 10 minutes.