Topic 'Re: It's more than just cord cutting...' in forum '' - dslreports.com

Re: It's more than just cord cutting...

Thu, 02 Nov 2017 10:37:37 EDT

tc1uscg posted :

They have become too political. People want to turn to them for sports, not politics or any of their political views.

They don't seem to understand this.

While I 100% agree with this, they also know that sports is an addiction, and no matter what they say on their shows..... people will be back.

Because sports. Because MY TEAM. Because GO MY TEAM!!

:D

I'm not a big sports person. I rather spend my weekends in the woods, hunting, camping, improving survival skills, etc. But always found it funny to hear hardcore couch fans use terms like "We Won!" or "They Lost" when "their" team was on the field.

Re: It's more than just cord cutting...

Wed, 01 Nov 2017 14:50:57 EDT

bobjohnson posted : I watched ESPN and H2 on cable. H2 went away and ESPN became expendable. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Re: It's more than just cord cutting...

Wed, 01 Nov 2017 13:28:37 EDT

The Antihero posted :

said by adam1991:

I mean, didn't Washington already do this with their football stadium, not allowing people to walk onto the property because that would deny them the parking fees?

Seriously? So instead of getting the admission fees but not the parking fees, they'd rather get neither?

I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

Re: It's more than just cord cutting...

Wed, 01 Nov 2017 11:34:09 EDT

BiggA posted : Yeah, I'm not sure either now that you mention it. The voting is usually decent on this site, but I've seen some good posts get downvoted too for no good reason.

Re: It's more than just cord cutting...

Wed, 01 Nov 2017 10:57:20 EDT

ncted posted : I can't tell if you are being sarcastic or not.

Re: It's more than just cord cutting...

Wed, 01 Nov 2017 10:44:11 EDT

BiggA posted : No, it's not. A few fringe right-wing whackjobs are not causing continued 1%+ year over year losses for pay TV. If anything, the right-wing whackjobs are helping pay TV, since they don't want to give up their actual fake news on Fox News.

Re: It's more than just cord cutting...

Wed, 01 Nov 2017 09:27:11 EDT

adam1991 posted :

said by Chuck_IV:

Sometime it's not all about the money.

I can't wait for Big Sports to get caught up in these bad contracts and political footballs, and try to monetize their way out by going the cableco route and collecting below the line fees.

"Yes sir, I realize you've been a season ticket holder for 30 years. But if you want to enter, you'll have to pay the $10 facility fee plus the $5 food availability fee. And if you want to buy beer, you'll have to pay $20 for the alcohol availability fee, to get the wristband that allows you to spend $10 on a 16 ounce beer."

I mean, didn't Washington already do this with their football stadium, not allowing people to walk onto the property because that would deny them the parking fees?

Re: It's more than just cord cutting...

Wed, 01 Nov 2017 08:58:20 EDT

Chuck_IV posted : No, both parts of my statement are right. It IS about politics. People don't want politics in their sports. Why do you think the NFL ratings are tanking so bad this year with all the protests?

Sometime it's not all about the money.

Re: It's more than just cord cutting...

Wed, 01 Nov 2017 00:49:24 EDT

davidhoffman posted : No, after a while you realize there are other sports to watch or other non-television things to do.

Re: It's more than just cord cutting...

Wed, 01 Nov 2017 00:43:07 EDT

soothsayer15 posted : Nonsense. Like noftiu correctly pointed out, ESPN is bundled. No one can cancel ESPN by itself. Cancelling ESPN requires a customer to cancel basic cable in most cases. “Cancelling” ESPN would result in Fox News being cancelled as well. Maybe Fox News is the real cause lol.

ESPN shows ONE NFL game per week for 16 weeks. Give me a break about politics. ESPN has been losing subscribers for years even without controversy. Some of you find any reason to start whining about politics you don’t agree with. Dance puppets dance.

Re: It's more than just cord cutting...

Tue, 31 Oct 2017 18:20:22 EDT

maartena posted :

said by Chuck_IV:

They have become too political. People want to turn to them for sports, not politics or any of their political views.

They don't seem to understand this.

Re: It's more than just cord cutting...

Tue, 31 Oct 2017 17:11:34 EDT

BiggA posted : The first part of your post is exactly right, the second part, exactly wrong. It's all about economics, not politics.

Re: It's more than just cord cutting...

Tue, 31 Oct 2017 16:30:22 EDT

Chuck_IV posted : It has a lot to do with why they are losing viewers. That's what some of you are missing.

ESPN is what KEPT a lot of sports fans subscribed to cable in the first place, even when the prices went up. They didn't want to lose their sports coverage when cutting the cable. Now that ESPN has started turning off a lot of these viewers with inserting their views on things, instead of just covering it objectively, their disinterest in ESPN is starting to give them that reason to finally cut the cord.

Re: It's more than just cord cutting...

Tue, 31 Oct 2017 15:23:30 EDT

FLATLINE posted : I dont see it.

Re: It's more than just cord cutting...

Tue, 31 Oct 2017 15:17:30 EDT

Ut98Ex posted : Great. So now you can have fox sports tell you that your team is winning so much that you will be sick of it even though they are 0-16.

Re: It's more than just cord cutting...

Tue, 31 Oct 2017 14:31:39 EDT

derek4484 posted : Absolutely. Then they forced too many commercials into games to compensate. Then games became 3.5-4 hours, then the sports had to change their rules to shorten them up. ESPN and it's greed has singlehandedly ruined college sports forever.

Re: It's more than just cord cutting...

Tue, 31 Oct 2017 14:29:45 EDT

derek4484 posted : I dropped ESPN as quickly as I could due to their liberal politics. I switched from Sling Orange to Sling Blue. Sling Orange gets ESPN, Sling Blue gets Fox Sports, so now my money goes to Fox Sports instead of ESPN. If a game is on that I really want to watch, I just go to my favorite sports bar to watch just the game.

Re: It's more than just cord cutting...

Tue, 31 Oct 2017 13:49:50 EDT

ncted posted : I haven't watched a whole NFL game in decades. It is just a bunch of overpaid guys running around on the field. The idea that our culture values pro sports over so many other underpaid professions is sickening. I can't wait for the TV money to dry up. The politicization of the anthem protests is just another example of how people need to learn how to go through life without getting outraged every 5 minutes, and that goes for whatever side of the political spectrum they might identify with. It is almost like a whole generation of people grew up thinking they were the center of the universe....oh, wait.

Re: It's more than just cord cutting...

Tue, 31 Oct 2017 13:42:42 EDT

chances14 posted :

said by nfotiu:

Subscriber loss has almost nothing to do with politics, and is the sole reason they are losing revenue. The only way to not be a subscriber is to stop subscribing to basic cable/sat tv packages. I doubt very many people cut the cord just because of ESPN's politics. ESPN has made their money by forcing themselves on to every basic cable package. They have profited more than anyone else off this model, and they are falling the hardest as it falls apart.

politics isn't the sole reason but it's going to accelerate it imo. Those who were on the fence about cord cutting because they didn't want to lose espn now have no reason to keep it anymore

Re: It's more than just cord cutting...

Tue, 31 Oct 2017 13:34:20 EDT

SoJo posted : Chuck you are spot on. Most times now I will turn just a game on and mute the sound.

Re: It's more than just cord cutting...

Tue, 31 Oct 2017 13:33:40 EDT

chances14 posted : it also doesn't help the perception when the ring leader of the protest becomes the biggest hypocrite on the planet by not even bothering to vote, advocates killing cops, considers fidel castro a role model, and then sues the nfl for not being employed even though he was the one who opted out of his contract with the 49'ers

Re: It's more than just cord cutting...

Tue, 31 Oct 2017 13:24:27 EDT

tc1uscg posted :

said by DarienRedSox:

Haven't watched one NFL game seance this disrespectful protest of the national anthem has began. I have had friends who have gone to fight for this country and not come home. If this is still going on come Superbowl time I will not be watching. Everyone has a right to protest but they should not be doing it in a way that disrespects our men and women in uniform.

I think the message got lost when politics came into play. And it doesn't help when your girlfriend goes off on a raciest tangent that only hurts the cause :uhh:. If they wanted to really protest, there are ways they could have taken this to the top. The WHOLE thing was about "Police Brutality" against non-whites. So, why do they allow or hire police/off duty police to provide security at the games? Seems to me if I didn't my house robbed, I wouldn't hire a group of known thief's to house sit while I'm out of town. Using a avenue that is tied more to our country and it's military and had as much to do with Law Enforcement as it does to the Boy Scout's Cooking merit badge does to Martha Stewart, well, they just picked the WRONG subject matter IMO.

Re: It's more than just cord cutting...

Tue, 31 Oct 2017 13:18:27 EDT

tc1uscg posted :

said by pnolte:

The best game in town is watching the people cry over who is taking a knee and how they are going to change the channel..

I was starting to enjoy the players crying about how they are being protested, then the wife changed to channel to something better. Re-runs of "Good Times".

Re: It's more than just cord cutting...

Tue, 31 Oct 2017 13:14:35 EDT

BiggA posted : It's unfortunate that people like you don't understand or apparently care to educate yourselves about BLM or the players taking a knee during the national anthem. If you had bothered to educate yourself about it, you would know that it's not about protesting the national anthem, or our armed forced, and that it's just troll bait that Trump put out there in order to distract people from the news about the incompetence and criminal activities of his campaign and administration and drive a wedge in society that didn't previously exist.

Re: It's more than just cord cutting...

Tue, 31 Oct 2017 13:14:05 EDT

The Antihero posted :

said by BiggA:

The whole market is beyond bloated, all the way down to the stadiums and colleges and their facilities and programs and whatnot.

Worse yet, in some areas the taxpayers got stuck paying for the stadiums.

Re: It's more than just cord cutting...

Tue, 31 Oct 2017 13:10:46 EDT

BiggA posted : Well, the first iterations were all about a la carte, and that's why they made no sense. I'm talking 2012-2013ish. We've moved beyond that, and in the end, you're right. The quality kept going down on cable, and the price kept going up. And now a lot of the best shows are on Netflix or HBO.

I do mourn the loss of TLC, Discovery, History, etc. Not making History every day, not Honey Boo-Boo Chiiiiiiiiiild, not fake Alaskan nuts with giant beards, but what those channels were 10-15 years ago. Endless WWII documentaries. Actual science and technology content. It's sad that they have chosen to make themselves relatively irrelevant.

Re: It's more than just cord cutting...

Tue, 31 Oct 2017 13:01:22 EDT

DarienRedSox posted : Haven't watched one NFL game seance this disrespectful protest of the national anthem has began. I have had friends who have gone to fight for this country and not come home. If this is still going on come Superbowl time I will not be watching. Everyone has a right to protest but they should not be doing it in a way that disrespects our men and women in uniform.

Re: It's more than just cord cutting...

Tue, 31 Oct 2017 12:49:02 EDT

adam1991 posted :

said by pnolte:

The best game in town is watching the people cry over who is taking a knee and how they are going to change the channel..

No, the best game in town is watching the cable TV subscription numbers drop like an NFL thug taking to his knee, and the entire house of cards that is the pay TV industry falling along with it.

Re: It's more than just cord cutting...

Tue, 31 Oct 2017 12:48:08 EDT

adam1991 posted :

said by BiggA:

A few years ago, I thought cord cutting was a nutty idea, because of the cost of a la carte.

It was never about a la carte. It was never about trying to acquire all the cable channels via a different route.

It was about realizing that what the pay TV system delivers has less and less value every year, as the shows get stupider and stupider and the price does nothing but skyrocket way faster than the inflation rate.

So as the value goes down, people simply stop doing that thing they were doing for many years, and change to doing something else. A la carte? Nope. I'll watch Netflix, thanks. Oh, Amazon is throwing in some video with my Prime membership that I'm going to have anyway? Bring it on.

A la carte is the straw man that the cable industry puts up to try to distract people from the real value equation discussion.

Cable delivers 400 channels--but if you did a study, you'd find that the vast majority of people pay attention to maybe 10 of those--and on a regular basis, actually watch maybe 5. But this is America! where MORE IS BETTER! so the cable industry dares you to get more channels for the price! never mind that the channels they're talking about are nothing but Kardashians and Honey Boo-Boo.

Re: It's more than just cord cutting...

Tue, 31 Oct 2017 12:40:01 EDT

BiggA posted : Because of Fat Donny and Agent Putin, politics has gotten into everything, but that has nothing to do with ESPN's policy. People aren't dropping cable because ESPN talked about politics.

As always, follow the money. It's the economy stupid. It all boils down to money. As the price of cable goes up and the value proposition goes down, more people cancel their cable. Not hard to figure out.

Re: It's more than just cord cutting...

Tue, 31 Oct 2017 12:25:44 EDT

tsteven3 posted :

said by Chuck_IV:

They have become too political. People want to turn to them for sports, not politics or any of their political views.

They don't seem to understand this.

Politics?

What are you talking about?

I don't get ESPN, on cable that is.

Re: It's more than just cord cutting...

Tue, 31 Oct 2017 11:51:47 EDT

pnolte posted : The best game in town is watching the people cry over who is taking a knee and how they are going to change the channel..

Re: It's more than just cord cutting...

Tue, 31 Oct 2017 11:25:03 EDT

BiggA posted : Absolutely. The whole market is beyond bloated, all the way down to the stadiums and colleges and their facilities and programs and whatnot. The whole market is based on unsustainable pricing for cable tv. The model worked great when cable was $30/mo, it was a good value, and now it's totally broken.

As the content providers get greedier and greedier, and MSOs aren't making much money off of TV anymore, the content providers seem unwilling to go back to square one and try and figure this whole system out in a sustainable way, so instead, cord cutting and cord shaving are going to bankrupt them and cause disintegration of the current model.

Americans will continue to watch TV, but they seem perfectly happy with local broadcast TV or Netflix and other streaming platforms over anything cable can offer. A few years ago, I thought cord cutting was a nutty idea, because of the cost of a la carte. However, in the meantime, the quality of content on cable has taken a nosedive (not that it was that great 5 years ago), and most of the good shows are gone, with all sorts of MTV-edited trash on the cable channels that's hard to even watch. The only thing left is sports, and how much are you willing to pay for sports?

Re: It's more than just cord cutting...

Tue, 31 Oct 2017 11:15:50 EDT

battleop posted : Sports in general has become too political. Take a knee and I go find something else to watch. I'm not going to watch and support those ungrateful athletes. Protest all you want but find a more respectful way to do it.

Re: It's more than just cord cutting...

Tue, 31 Oct 2017 10:24:20 EDT

adam1991 posted :

said by elefante72:

The big elephant in the room is that ESPN paid WAY too much for sports rights.

100% agreed.

Re: It's more than just cord cutting...

Tue, 31 Oct 2017 10:23:19 EDT

adam1991 posted :

said by Chuck_IV:

They have become too political. People want to turn to them for sports, not politics or any of their political views.

They don't seem to understand this.

And again, I wonder who downvoted this.

Re: It's more than just cord cutting...

Tue, 31 Oct 2017 10:20:36 EDT

elefante72 posted : I believe also once they start their own streaming then cable companies can then de-bundle it from basic cable. Disney may not allow it, but at the end of the day maybe the cable companies just resell the Disney bundle and make a few bucks on it.

The big elephant in the room is that ESPN paid WAY too much for sports rights. Sooner or later one of these folks default or renegotiate in secret but the days of has been quarterbacks making $15m a year are numbered (except maybe in Dallas).

The next step will be pulling content from Netflix and the like and put them all behind paywalls. The content wars will begin. People will get pissed and they will turn into dollar songs from $15 CD's.

Ultimately it will lead to better products but we are talking at least 5-7 years here.

Re: It's more than just cord cutting...

Tue, 31 Oct 2017 09:58:20 EDT

nfotiu posted : The money isn't there in streaming since there is no way to make every household (even the ones that never watch them) pay $7-10/month.

That model was a huge cash cow, and probably the right business decision was to ride it as long as they could. The only criticism from a revenue standpoint was that their greed in continually raising their rates probably worked towards accelerating cord cutting.

Re: It's more than just cord cutting...

Tue, 31 Oct 2017 09:41:03 EDT

chrono32123 posted : They waited too long to join the streaming market. They should have been leading in making sports streams but they didn't.

Re: It's more than just cord cutting...

Tue, 31 Oct 2017 09:21:26 EDT

nfotiu posted : Subscriber loss has almost nothing to do with politics, and is the sole reason they are losing revenue. The only way to not be a subscriber is to stop subscribing to basic cable/sat tv packages. I doubt very many people cut the cord just because of ESPN's politics. ESPN has made their money by forcing themselves on to every basic cable package. They have profited more than anyone else off this model, and they are falling the hardest as it falls apart.

Re: It's more than just cord cutting...

Tue, 31 Oct 2017 08:57:52 EDT

DarienRedSox posted : agreed, but they don't seem to be taking the hint.

It's more than just cord cutting...

Tue, 31 Oct 2017 08:52:35 EDT

Chuck_IV posted : They have become too political. People want to turn to them for sports, not politics or any of their political views.

They don't seem to understand this.