Bring on the new bundle!
EDITOR'S NOTE
Can we talk about how annoying it's gotten to watch TV?
This has been a typical scene in our house over the past week or so: we're watching the U.S. Open on ESPN, but they're only showing, say, the Coco Gauff match. Being longtime tennis fans, we're itching to see some of the action from the other matches happening at the same time, but ESPN isn't showing them on any of its other TV channels this year. Instead, they're pushing us to the ESPN app.
Okay, fine, ESPN, you win. We grab the other remote, for the TV, hit "Source," toggle over to some app store where we can "get" the ESPN app, log in through some wacky authentication process, and voila, other matches to choose from! Oh, but wait...the one we wanted to watch is only being carried on ESPN+, and we're not about to pay $4.99 a month for that right now.
Moreover, navigating between matches within the app is a little clunky (and that's when the WiFi is working smoothly!). And now, someone (yours truly) wants to check the news real quick to catch the latest on Hurricane Dorian. So now we're flipping back to regular TV to check in on that, and of course none of the major channels is carrying it right now, so it's back to other remote to go back to the ESPN app, etc.
Now, we have Verizon FiOS, so it's possible the other carriers have come up with a much sleeker way to organize all this content. I also realize that, given what a maze this has all become, voice control is probably the future of TV navigation no matter what platform you're on. Which is too bad, because we're reeeeally reticent to add any eavesdroppers (err, "voice-enabled technology") in our house.
Oh, and one more thing: this whole byzantine structure makes it clearer to me that pairing, say, your streaming TV show with a quick news check on your phone via social media probably makes a lot more sense in this day and age than the TV-channel-flipping information gathering of the past.
Now, as someone who works for Comcast, I'm obviously rooting for the traditional carriers to figure this all out. (That said, we're basically an internet provider.) With the imminent launch of Disney Plus and NBC's own streaming service next year--not to mention Quibi et al--this content navigation problem is only going to get worse.
My neighbor asked us the other night which streaming service they should go with if they cancel cable. That's a tough question to answer right now, because the offerings are rapidly changing and it hugely depends on what you're mainly watching. And if one cable package has to be replaced with multiple streaming services, it may not even be that much cheaper to be worth the hassle. (Also: try skipping the ads in, say, HGTV's streaming app. You can't! The DVR has never looked so good.)
There's still a huge opportunity for the carriers to bundle this all together in a better way--especially if they can get the cost down. Which is why you're seeing major blow-ups like the one in Denver over Altitude TV right now.
And if the traditional TV players don't do it, I'm sure Google (or Apple, or Amazon...) would be happy to figure out a brand new, easier-to-use type of TV bundle, if regulators would let them.
See you at 1 p.m.!
Kelly
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