Headline: "Warner Bros. Discovery Posts Nearly $10 Billion Loss" - No Kidding?

It's not all progress. WE used to pay for cable to be able to watch without commercials. Now you pay to watch commercials and pay even more for a subscription level that has fewer commercials... and the "reality" content is just garbage.
Long distance phone calls are only "free" because it's now just IP traffic on the same internet... you pay your phone bill AND your internet bill AND your subscription services.
Nothing is ever free.
 
Some of the original episodes are on youtube too. It just amazes me that they didn't keep master copies and have for sale.
 
It's not all progress. WE used to pay for cable to be able to watch without commercials. Now you pay to watch commercials and pay even more for a subscription level that has fewer commercials... and the "reality" content is just garbage.
Long distance phone calls are only "free" because it's now just IP traffic on the same internet... you pay your phone bill AND your internet bill AND your subscription services.
Nothing is ever free.
Yeah, nothing is free - it's now just "included." We used to pay $20 for a land line and maybe once a month we made a long distance call for $5. NOW most of our calls are long distance - but our phone(s) is almost $50 for the two of us.

Cable TV was $15 and we got maybd 15 or 20 channels. Now TV and internet (here on the mainland where I am for the summer sets me back almost $200! Yikes!) Of course, we get 15 sports and 10 shopping network channels we never watch along with our 200 other channels that we rarely watch. I probably use 5 channels regularly. BUT to get the ones I want, I can't just buy the basic. SO not so "FREE" when you think about it all.
 
It's not all progress. WE used to pay for cable to be able to watch without commercials. Now you pay to watch commercials and pay even more for a subscription level that has fewer commercials... and the "reality" content is just garbage.
Long distance phone calls are only "free" because it's now just IP traffic on the same internet... you pay your phone bill AND your internet bill AND your subscription services.
Nothing is ever free.
I don’t recall cable TV ever being commercial free. Some streaming services today offer commercial free programming, options, for a price.
 
It's not all progress. WE used to pay for cable to be able to watch without commercials. Now you pay to watch commercials and pay even more for a subscription level that has fewer commercials... and the "reality" content is just garbage.
Long distance phone calls are only "free" because it's now just IP traffic on the same internet... you pay your phone bill AND your internet bill AND your subscription services.
Nothing is ever free.
I don’t recall cable TV ever being commercial free. Some streaming services today offer commercial free programming, options, for a price.
I have one word for you, Benjamin. DVR

I love having DVR. I zap so many commercials I feel almost, well, guilty! ALMOST. YMMV
 
I don’t recall cable TV ever being commercial free. Some streaming services today offer commercial free programming, options, for a price.
Right, it’s seems that generally cable TV was never ad free except for some premium channels like HBO.
 
I don’t recall cable TV ever being commercial free. Some streaming services today offer commercial free programming, options, for a price.
It was when it first came out... I remember watching at my sisters house 50 or so years ago...

They mostly watched HBO at the time.. there were other channels we watched but I do not remember them... but all were commercial free..
 
I don't recall commercial free except the one or two "included" premium channels like HBO on early Cable.
 
Yeah, nothing is free - it's now just "included." We used to pay $20 for a land line and maybe once a month we made a long distance call for $5. NOW most of our calls are long distance - but our phone(s) is almost $50 for the two of us.
Phone charges are far less expensive today. I was paying $30 - $35 for a land line 20 years ago that I could only use when I was at home.

Now I pay $30 for a cell phone that I can use anywhere
 
Phone charges are far less expensive today. I was paying $30 - $35 for a land line 20 years ago that I could only use when I was at home.

Now I pay $30 for a cell phone that I can use anywhere
Yeah, wireless technology has really changed things. Anything to do with communications or entertainment delivery has totally changed the landscape for ever compared to even 20 years ago. It's been an amazing ride. I wonder where we're headed with AI.
 
Not sure how this is really gonna work with streaming live sports. It’s awful. The WNBA is on fire right now and several streamers have their games. They take commercial breaks but it’s dead air. All the traditional networks have premium streaming versions like peacock. There are too many. Amazon and others have outbid cable companies so NFL is taking the money but fewer eyeballs are on the product.

I subscribe to F1 TV Pro at $79/year. I would probably pay double that so I feel it is a bargain. They got it right, dead on right. NFL, MLB, NBA will eventually have to do the same thing.

Here is what they do.

F1 provides 2 feeds, basically an F1 feed with their own lineup and a feed from the international Sky TV. The Sky TV feed has breaks for ads. You can watch either feed depending on which announcers you prefer.

If the NFL did this it would probably solve their streaming concerns.
 
Formula 1? Somehow hard for me to compare that with live action play by play events. Many events have multiple feeds with various hosts (Manningcast, Coaches Room, etc). The F1 price seems good though. I’m kinda giving up on NFL. They want people pay a premium for everything.
 
? Free for me. I have rabbit ears and get the major networks. If I miss the occasional game that's on ESPN, oh well. I don't watch the NFL all that much anyway, just games here and there and even then half the time I'll be bouncing around the house doing this or that and just checking the scores once in awhile.
 
Formula 1? Somehow hard for me to compare that with live action play by play events. Many events have multiple feeds with various hosts (Manningcast, Coaches Room, etc). The F1 price seems good though. I’m kinda giving up on NFL. They want people pay a premium for everything.
I like RedZone and All22 and am willing to pay for that. I also never watch "TV" anymore and I'm always streaming on 4K computer screens, iPad or my phone. I haven't watched the "TV" in the living room for years, my wife does, though.

I'm a pretty hardcore sports fan and don't need broadcast announcers. I prefer to hear the Mannings and others speak in shorthand as I can watch the game and digest what is going on. I played long ago in high school but those hours of practices and games still seems like yesterday.

I really despise the camera angles that are a vestige of NTSC low resolution viewing. Everyone has 1080P and some have 4K so an All22 view is fine. If they went to a streaming mindset they could have options for this the way that F1 works.

The other thing I like about F1 and streaming in general is you can pause the stream, go take a bio break or food break or honey-do break, come back and FF through the commercial breaks and non-action quickly and feel like you didn't miss much. I can also transfer to my phone if I need to drive somewhere. That sort of portability rocks for me.
 
? Free for me. I have rabbit ears and get the major networks. If I miss the occasional game that's on ESPN, oh well. I don't watch the NFL all that much anyway, just games here and there and even then half the time I'll be bouncing around the house doing this or that and just checking the scores once in awhile.
Free for me too since I don't watch NFL. But I think the discussion is wider than you and me. For those who had "Sunday Ticket" or whatever it was called, the world has changed radically and gotten much more expensive.

Remember, there are people who try to watch every game. Usually for some gamble they made on the game or player.
 
But that's an upgrade choice. It'd be like someone complaining about the cost of new cars when all they buy are Corvettes.
 
The gambling and monetization of every single sq inch is annoying to me. It’s not enough to for the stadium/arena to have a named sponsor. Now the court/field, goals, uniforms etc all have their own sponsors. It’s getting to be like auto racing.
 
To say nothing of the ever-growing hype machine....pre-game chatter, halftime chatter, post-game chatter, interviews, "inside stories" etc etc. The SB is the worst. Can't stand any of it. Big money tends to ruin sports one way or the other to one degree or other.
 
To say nothing of the ever-growing hype machine....pre-game chatter, halftime chatter, post-game chatter, interviews, "inside stories" etc etc. The SB is the worst. Can't stand any of it. Big money tends to ruin sports one way or the other to one degree or other.
I don't mind the game itself. I hate the commercials and the hype surrounding the commercials. If you use one of the bootleg feeds you can watch it commercial free which is pretty cool as you get the international feed. It is interesting to see and hear the announcers during the breaks. You can see them scooting off for a toilet or food break, etc.
 
I sort of re-discovered this thread, hope it's not too old to post some thoughts...

I recently switched from cable to fiber for internet. We ditched cable TV years ago and only do streaming anyway. I almost felt bad for the poor lady at the cable company when I called to cancel after 44 years. She was so proud of the new, lower rates they had just announced that day, and was no doubt anticipating lots of great commissions for up-selling their crap. I tried to be as nice as I could, but I drew the line at letting her give me all the details on their new line-ups. The nicest way I could think of to say it was that I'm just tired of playing that game and want to give fiber a try.

I also want to mention an often-unrecognized option: YouTube.

Yeah, I know. The cesspool of the internet. But there is a lot of material out there, and mixed in amongst all the crap and click bait are a few gems. Find a channel you like and bookmark it so you can find it again. I've also been able to find full series of old-time TV shows when I'm feeling nostalgic.

The other thing I do which makes a difference is set my browser to delete cookies on exit. This way I'm not spoon-fed videos the algorithm thinks might keep me "engaged." (Which is their euphemism for angry and hateful.)

The down side is it can be a painful reminder of how low our society has sunk. If I watch, for example, a science-based video, over on the right I'm offered a long list of BS pseudo-science videos with scary thumbnails and shocking titles, trying to draw me down various conspiracy-theory rabbit holes. Apparently those are the things which keep the average American "engaged." Frightening.
 
I'm not really up to speed with the business aspects of a lot of the streaming platforms. However, I'm sure that with two homes and a young DGD living in one of them, we're spending almost as much for streaming channels as we were before cutting the cable. Netflix, Disney, Hulu, Paramount+, Peacock, and then things like Starz and HBO off and on when new seasons of good shows come out. We take the lowest cost versions with ads, but it still adds up. We now need two Netflix accounts to cover the two homes, and some of the others are cracking down on sharing which will cause additional problems. They don't make it easy to reset your location if you travel.

I think the History channel has made a huge mistake by not letting you access the channel unless you have a cable provider. We used to watch it a lot, but when we sold the house in FL and cancelled the Comcast account there was no way to continue the access. Stupid corporate decisions like that result in the well-deserved slow death of the company. Enshittification is a perfect descriptor of what a lot of these companies are going through.
 
I think the History channel has made a huge mistake by not letting you access the channel unless you have a cable provider.
History channel made a huge mistake by not really being a history channel, at least the last I saw/heard of it. It's all UFO crap and WW 2. There is other history out there dudes.
 
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