6 ms·

I was really hoping the tech giants would be able to transform live TV as opposed to offer the same experience for (now) the same price.

ghaff 3y ago
Content is king. And you can't even neatly excise sports content from everything else. If you can live without most live content, you really do have good, albeit fragmented, alternatives. But it does require giving up live TV.
- izzydata 3y ago
  This just made me realize I don't believe I've ever intentionally watched live TV my entire life.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    That is extremely rare above a certain age. It may be more common today, especially if you make a point of avoiding sports, but there are a ton of situations in which people gravitated to live TV until very recently (when some don't now have it).
swatcoder 3y ago
It's because the shape was due to licensing and contracts by content producers, not the technology of distribution. Online distribution licenses were underpriced and differently packaged for a while because producers didn't know what revenue to anticipate or which horse would be the best to bet on. But as the industry matured, stuff evened out again and it's mostly back to normal. Many conveniences of the new technology are nice, though.
chung8123 3y ago
Netflix did transform TV. Cable subscriptions are shrinking. Many people have switch to a streaming on demand service vs a linear service. You can watch most TV without ads.
- nicce 3y ago
  That used to be the case couple years back. Now they are bringing ads to these streaming services. And you have 10 different streaming services what you need to buy separately. Soon there will be bundling streaming service and we are back to cable tv pricing and ads.
  - chung8123 3y ago
    You can still buy non-ad services and the amount of content you can get at one time has increased incredibly. I would also say the new format has increased the quality of content. In my personal opinion, tech has really changed the industry and how we watch tv.
  - anonymoose33282 3y ago
    Yeah we're definitely seeing a slow return to "this is on-demand cable". And all I see is that independent content (like YT videos) will continue to grow. I can definitely say that I watch probably one tenth as many shows and movies now as I did 7 or 8 years ago, simply due to how fragmented streaming services have become. I keep a Netflix subscription running for my parents, get the free few months of Apple TV every year or so from buying a new device, and beyond that I just watch more and more YouTube in my free time and go to the cinema maybe twice a year. Sure, YouTube doesn't really have any blockbuster/high-budget/studio-level content, but there's simply so much and so many niches that it keeps me entertained just as well as anything else, so I subscribe to YT premium and that's it.
  - babypuncher 3y ago
    which services have eliminated their ad-free options?
    - oblio 3y ago
      None, because the pressure to grow and/or show higher profits hasn't reached a boiling point. Give it time.
  - ksherlock 3y ago
jayknight 3y ago
I hope mlb.tv someday offers all games (without blackouts) and no commercial breaks. Just leave the cameras in the field and crowd between innings. I'd pay good money for that.
- pradn 3y ago
  MLB could offer a super pricy option to skip all the ads, but they wouldn’t because they can’t tell advertisers that their richest customers aren’t gonna be part of the audience. Advertising distorts the market for everyone.
- spike021 3y ago
  As soon as they do I'm dropping YTTV. Fortunately I pay 1/3 the YTTV cost by sharing with a friend so the cost isn't too bad. But it's too much content for my needs, and I don't prefer sharing access.
- poulsbohemian 3y ago
  Dude, this all day long. In this era to have blackouts is just ridiculous when consumers are willing to hand you wads of cash for your content.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
flenserboy 3y ago
Unless there is true change, both in delivery & content, most everything reverts back to the way it was. Music delivery seems (semi-)permanently changed, as it is nigh unimaginable for the album as it was known to make a comeback, market-wise. No similar change has happened or been allowed to happen on the TV-heritage side of things, & so we get new, shiner versions of the Old Ways.
paxys 3y ago
Tech giants have successfully transformed live TV, simply by killing it completely. No one under 35 subscribes to any kind of live TV service today other than to watch sports, and in another decade that will be fully online as well (look at the inroads Amazon and Apple are already making in that space). Some of the best new TV content is increasingly owned by Netflix, Amazon, Apple and the like. Cable TV and any kind of non-sports/special events broadcasting is going to disappear as a concept within our lifetimes.
- xwdv 3y ago
  Cable TV will still be around for commercial settings.
  - cjbgkagh 3y ago
    How much of comercial settings will be eaten up be online shopping? I can’t remember the last time I went to a brick and mortar store to buy something.
    - xwdv 3y ago
      TVs in bars is a billion dollar industry.
      - kalupa 3y ago
        AFAIK, and I'm with you on this, that bars that have tvs have to at least pretend to pay the rights holders for playing sports on their tvs, which in turn brings people in to spend money on drinks and/or food. I can't imaging having to train every new employee on how to use the streaming-only custom set up you'd end up with without using a cable box, which, well, everyone probably already kind of knows how to operate ... at least for now. It does make me wonder how long until the new employees won't have a clue how to use a cable box due to never having used one ever.
  - 13of40 3y ago
    Businesses still have landline telephones too, but I feel like they're just less agile, not that they'll never catch up with the times.
rchaud 3y ago
'Disruption' is a marketing tactic these days. Netflix keeps hiking prices even though they're not paying usurious amounts to license other networks' content. Uber now isn't any cheaper than the stodgy taxis they replaced.
scoofy 3y ago
You’re think of YouTube. The business model of television, especially live television, wasn’t really ever going to cost significantly less than it did. The inverse relationship between advertising and number of outlets would necessitate higher costs to the consumer, not lower costs. Anyone willing to create content at extremely low cost has flourished under the YouTube paradigm.
- 8bitsrule 3y ago
  > Anyone willing to create content at extremely low cost has flourished under the YouTube paradigm. That idea won't stand up to close scrutiny. Especially the 'Anyone' part. YouTube undoubtedly enriches itself on their efforts. If most 'Anyone's have 'fluorished' at all it's because of their viewers; most of the 'channel' owners that I've watched regularly for years rely on Patreon for support. I very much doubt that refusing ad-blockers will change any of that.
rednerrus 3y ago
YoutubeTV experience is WAY better.

ghaff 3y ago

Content is king. And you can't even neatly excise sports content from everything else. If you can live without most live content, you really do have good, albeit fragmented, alternatives. But it does require giving up live TV.

izzydata 3y ago
This just made me realize I don't believe I've ever intentionally watched live TV my entire life.
- ghaff 3y ago
  That is extremely rare above a certain age. It may be more common today, especially if you make a point of avoiding sports, but there are a ton of situations in which people gravitated to live TV until very recently (when some don't now have it).

swatcoder 3y ago

It's because the shape was due to licensing and contracts by content producers, not the technology of distribution. Online distribution licenses were underpriced and differently packaged for a while because producers didn't know what revenue to anticipate or which horse would be the best to bet on. But as the industry matured, stuff evened out again and it's mostly back to normal. Many conveniences of the new technology are nice, though.

chung8123 3y ago

Netflix did transform TV. Cable subscriptions are shrinking. Many people have switch to a streaming on demand service vs a linear service. You can watch most TV without ads.

nicce 3y ago
That used to be the case couple years back. Now they are bringing ads to these streaming services. And you have 10 different streaming services what you need to buy separately. Soon there will be bundling streaming service and we are back to cable tv pricing and ads.
- chung8123 3y ago
  You can still buy non-ad services and the amount of content you can get at one time has increased incredibly. I would also say the new format has increased the quality of content. In my personal opinion, tech has really changed the industry and how we watch tv.
- anonymoose33282 3y ago
  Yeah we're definitely seeing a slow return to "this is on-demand cable". And all I see is that independent content (like YT videos) will continue to grow. I can definitely say that I watch probably one tenth as many shows and movies now as I did 7 or 8 years ago, simply due to how fragmented streaming services have become. I keep a Netflix subscription running for my parents, get the free few months of Apple TV every year or so from buying a new device, and beyond that I just watch more and more YouTube in my free time and go to the cinema maybe twice a year. Sure, YouTube doesn't really have any blockbuster/high-budget/studio-level content, but there's simply so much and so many niches that it keeps me entertained just as well as anything else, so I subscribe to YT premium and that's it.
- babypuncher 3y ago
  which services have eliminated their ad-free options?
  - oblio 3y ago
    None, because the pressure to grow and/or show higher profits hasn't reached a boiling point. Give it time.
- ksherlock 3y ago

jayknight 3y ago

I hope mlb.tv someday offers all games (without blackouts) and no commercial breaks. Just leave the cameras in the field and crowd between innings. I'd pay good money for that.

pradn 3y ago
MLB could offer a super pricy option to skip all the ads, but they wouldn’t because they can’t tell advertisers that their richest customers aren’t gonna be part of the audience. Advertising distorts the market for everyone.
spike021 3y ago
As soon as they do I'm dropping YTTV. Fortunately I pay 1/3 the YTTV cost by sharing with a friend so the cost isn't too bad. But it's too much content for my needs, and I don't prefer sharing access.
poulsbohemian 3y ago
Dude, this all day long. In this era to have blackouts is just ridiculous when consumers are willing to hand you wads of cash for your content.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

flenserboy 3y ago

Unless there is true change, both in delivery & content, most everything reverts back to the way it was. Music delivery seems (semi-)permanently changed, as it is nigh unimaginable for the album as it was known to make a comeback, market-wise. No similar change has happened or been allowed to happen on the TV-heritage side of things, & so we get new, shiner versions of the Old Ways.

paxys 3y ago

Tech giants have successfully transformed live TV, simply by killing it completely. No one under 35 subscribes to any kind of live TV service today other than to watch sports, and in another decade that will be fully online as well (look at the inroads Amazon and Apple are already making in that space). Some of the best new TV content is increasingly owned by Netflix, Amazon, Apple and the like. Cable TV and any kind of non-sports/special events broadcasting is going to disappear as a concept within our lifetimes.

xwdv 3y ago
Cable TV will still be around for commercial settings.
- cjbgkagh 3y ago
  How much of comercial settings will be eaten up be online shopping? I can’t remember the last time I went to a brick and mortar store to buy something.
  - xwdv 3y ago
    TVs in bars is a billion dollar industry.
    - kalupa 3y ago
      AFAIK, and I'm with you on this, that bars that have tvs have to at least pretend to pay the rights holders for playing sports on their tvs, which in turn brings people in to spend money on drinks and/or food. I can't imaging having to train every new employee on how to use the streaming-only custom set up you'd end up with without using a cable box, which, well, everyone probably already kind of knows how to operate ... at least for now. It does make me wonder how long until the new employees won't have a clue how to use a cable box due to never having used one ever.
- 13of40 3y ago
  Businesses still have landline telephones too, but I feel like they're just less agile, not that they'll never catch up with the times.

rchaud 3y ago

'Disruption' is a marketing tactic these days. Netflix keeps hiking prices even though they're not paying usurious amounts to license other networks' content. Uber now isn't any cheaper than the stodgy taxis they replaced.

scoofy 3y ago

You’re think of YouTube. The business model of television, especially live television, wasn’t really ever going to cost significantly less than it did. The inverse relationship between advertising and number of outlets would necessitate higher costs to the consumer, not lower costs. Anyone willing to create content at extremely low cost has flourished under the YouTube paradigm.

8bitsrule 3y ago
> Anyone willing to create content at extremely low cost has flourished under the YouTube paradigm. That idea won't stand up to close scrutiny. Especially the 'Anyone' part. YouTube undoubtedly enriches itself on their efforts. If most 'Anyone's have 'fluorished' at all it's because of their viewers; most of the 'channel' owners that I've watched regularly for years rely on Patreon for support. I very much doubt that refusing ad-blockers will change any of that.

rednerrus 3y ago

YoutubeTV experience is WAY better.