The Golden Era of Streaming Is Over

 We switched from Dish Network satellite TV to streaming in 2019 and I haven't regretted it once. The main reason was cost. Our Dish bill would go in excess of $200 per month at times. The straw that broke the camel's back is when Dish got into a contract dispute with Bally Sports, making it impossible to watch the Pacers. YouTube TV had all the channels we wanted, including Bally Sports, at a fraction of the cost so we made the jump. YouTube TV eventually lost Bally Sports as well, so that point became moot. Regardless, I've found the YouTube TV (YTT) experience and streaming in general to be better than traditional TV.  The DVR on YTT is the best DVR I have ever experienced. It never misses any recordings, and is smart enough to adjust the time if the show is extended or starts late. The biggest advantage streaming has over traditional TV, however, is the large volume of content available through various apps. As it turns out, this has also become streaming's biggest disadvantage.

YTT is now in a contract dispute with the ESPN family of channels. Last night, the contract ended and the channels went off the app. This is a reminder that despite being a streaming app, YTT acts and functions just like cable. While it used to be cheaper to stream and the apps could avoid such contract disputes, that era has come to an end. The interesting thing about streaming that makes it different from traditional TV, is that when these disputes happen, the content is usually still available. Previously, if a dispute happened, you'd be forced to switch TV providers if a contract wasn't agreed upon. Now, if ESPN is pulled from YTT, you can just subscribe to ESPN+. To YTT's credit, they actually discount our bill when these contract disputes happen, which is unheard of. But while the content is still available, the fear is that apps like YTT, which is great, will cease to exist because the channels will push their content to their own streaming apps. We've already heard rumors of this happening with NBC Sports shutting down and that content being pushed to Peacock. This gives the channels a lot of leverage in these negotiations, leverage they didn't have when they relied on cable distributors to deliver their content. The fear is that while the content will be available, it will be fragmented across several different apps that will require a subscription, making TV watching more complicated and possibly just as expensive as traditional cable. If this occurs, maybe traditional TV wasn't so bad after all?