Disney on Sunday pulled its ABC stations, ESPN and other cable networks from DirecTV’s lineup as the two companies failed to reach a new distribution deal, leaving millions of sports fans in the dark as the college football and NFL seasons get underway.
One monoply fighting another monopoly… Break them both up into smaller pieces.
Isn’t the point of directtv kind of anti monopoly. Satellite has no specific footprint like cable where geographic monopolies are carved out… But the real monopoly is when it’s all exclusively on ESPN or whatever Disney’s streaming service is. Like apple TV with mls being the 1 global streamer.
AT&T and Google don’t have any problem being monopolies without a geographic lock on things.
AT&T purchased DirecTV, then to get out of direct monopoly charges they spun it off as its own company but retained 70% ownership.
Just about every decent sized company out there is just a single entity in a giant monopolistic trench coat.
Feeling sorry for all the direct TV customer service reps right now.
If it makes you feel better I’m sure AT&T is working on replacing them with an AI chatbot as we speak
We left the room with Bob’s Burgers or King of the Hill or something on FXX. By the time we got back that shit was gone
This also screws over AT&T U-verse coaxial TV subscribers, like me, not just internet-streaming DirecTV customers :(
We all have our last straw with CableTV, maybe this is the one for you to cut the cord too! It’s cheaper on the other side, I promise.
It’s cheaper on the other side, I promise.
Is it? Because if you add up all the streaming services out there, it’s a lot more expensive than cable. And, unlike cable, if you don’t pay for them all, you don’t get to watch their content. That used to be just for a handful of premium channels on cable. Now you miss thousands of hours of content with tons of new content every month because you refuse to pay that streaming service’s $15 a month fee.
Granted, my comment is subjective to what you watch and how often you watch things, but here’s how this cheap ass tight wad did it:
I was spending $117/mo on DirectTV. My family wanted Disney, some movie choices and I wanted Discovery and News. When I cancelled DirectTV I bought:
- RCA OTA outdoor antenna $50
- Roku Ultimate $90
The ota antenna took the place of my dish, so it fit perfectly and gave me all local channels plus local news.
The roku opened up for us to get Disney+ and SlingTV Orange, costing $48/mo. while saving half the cost on our normal monthly Directtv.
Now, we also subscribe off and on to other subscriptions, binge watch crap and cancel, but I will admit I do pirate stuff from time to time too using a gen1 hacked fire stick.
For most people and even without pirating, doing this is enough to get your TV fix, thus the comment. Still, I’m sure there’s people out there that want those 100 channels and there’s just no resolve for that situation without spending a lot more.
Yes, it’s much cheaper. Maybe not if you tried to replicate the package but why would you? Most people don’t watch everything. More importantly, streaming frees you from their schedule and opens the possibility of binge watching entire seasons.
For me:
- FROM triple play including 300Mb internet, most channels but no premiums
- TO gigabit Ethernet, 2-3 streaming services at a time
- SAVED half every month
How many hours of content are you watching every day? You don’t need all of them. And it isn’t some two year contract like cable is. You can cancel or resubscribe anytime. It would be more like if cable allowed you to split your bill into batches of channels and you could choose which ones you wanted to pay for every month.
Companies shouldn’t be able to place their customers in the middle of their negotiations like this.
