(05-16-2022 08:26 PM)PirateTreasureNC Wrote:  In my case, I finally was going to have a competitor to my current option come into my market, but their tv side is streaming box channels only--no cable box/line channels.... in that world 3 tvs in the house would be SOL and not worth the investment to get stream boxes attached but also, not worth the hassle of figuring up all the apps and what not needed to just see what we normally watch... so in the end, going with the competitor just wasn't a viable option financially or user friendly for me.

I ended up buying the Disney+ bundle last November because of all the stuff they kept dropping on it.... so with NetFlix and D+ I have nearly all the streaming alternatives I will actually watch. It still killed me to pay for ESPN+ in that when my sports tier package gets me ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNEWS, ESPNU, SECN, ACCN, and ____. But at the rate they kept pushing ECU games to + instead of normal channels I was almost forced to do it--especially for basketball and baseball, luckily, the ESPN+ tied to my cable provider does open up a few more ESPN family of channels to get games on.

I tell you what though, as soon as "someone" sees the money dry up they will try to recoup in other ways. Think about how cheap streaming was a few years ago, and in some cases a throwaway extra and now the fees have gone up, content is getting more diverse but spread across more platforms because everyone wants their cut and their "hook" to get you to their platform. Once the cable well dries up, the money will get replaced in the streaming fees.

Then the truth will come out.

P5 ratings are mostly due to their linear timeslots.

Ultimately consumers won't pay for linear TV and if they can't get what they want streaming they'll just follow something else.