I used to work for Sling TV, and you basically have that backwards. ESPN is the part of Disney's package that people are willing to pay money for. The shutdown and negotiations every year is just Disney forcing the various providers to pay for and carry their other channels. That's why Disney always holds these negotiations during football season, so if they have to shut someone down their customers actually care. Every year viewership on Disney's other channels (and non-sports channels in general) is lower, and the prices that the content producers require goes up. Scripted television is in serious decline, and Hollywood is using sports fans to prop it up.

As an example, If you don't care about sports you can get Disney+ without ads for about $12 a month. Disney will happily throw in Hulu for that same price if you will watch some ads. You can binge watch the shows that you care about and then switch to another channel. Heck, you can buy entire seasons of their shows ala carte. You can't get ESPN however, without paying at least $45/month, and that's with a package with no non-Disney channels and chuck full of ads. For the record, that's basically what the streaming services are paying Disney as well. When I worked at Sling the entirety of the subscription fees went to the content companies (primarily Disney). There is essentially no profit in cable packages. All of the profit has to be made up somewhere else.

People that aren't sports fans, especially if they are entertainment fans, tend to believe that scripted programming is carrying sports, but it is the other way around. That's why AppleTV, which has spent over $20 billion creating content for their channel has about as many subscribers the amount of people that typically watch a single episode of Thursday Night Football, the worst professional football game of the week. Amazon Prime pays $1 billion a year for that franchise, and it is a bargain compared to creating scripted content. Apple makes great television that almost no one pays for. The other content providers are in the same boat. You'll notice, for example, that Netflix's most expensive package is $25/month, and the revenue per user in the U.S. is around $16. That's ad free. The lowest promotional price you can pay for ESPN is basically twice that, and it always comes with ads. What's more, sports fans tend to actually watch the ads.

Sling is selling day and weekend passes to people because it knows that most of its customers only have their service to watch the game. No one is watching linear television anymore, but the content creators have built their entire business around the idea of having a channel that they fill up with content. Even with Sling's ridiculous prices they can typically watch the games they want to watch for less than maintaining a subscription.

I have spent most of my adult life in the sports world, but I don't watch sports. I personally believe that in the long run sports television is probably going to end up uncoupled from scripted television. I think that is going to be very bad news for people that like scripted television.

Anthropic's entire pitch has always been safety. Innovation like this tends to favor a very few companies, and it leaves behind a whole pile of losers that also had to spend ridiculous amounts of capital in the hopes of catching the next wave. If you bet on the winning company you make a pile of money, if you pick one of the losers then the capital you invested evaporates. Anthropic has positioned itself as OpenAI, except with safeguards, and that could very well be the formula that wins the jackpot. Historically, litigation and government sponsorship have been instrumental in picking winners.

However, as things currently stand, Anthropic is unlikely to win on technical merits over its competition. So Dario's entire job as a CEO is basically to get the government involved. If he can create enough doubt about the people that are currently making decisions in AI circles that the government gets involved, either directly through government investment, or indirectly through legislation, then his firm has a chance at grabbing the brass ring. That's not to say that he is wrong, he might even be sincere. It is just that it isn't surprising that his pitch is that AI has the potential to be wildly dangerous and we need to think about safety. That's essentially the only path that makes his firm a viable long term player.

He used to win these market timing games because no one was paying attention to huge short positions. You could quietly bet against a company, or, better yet, you could quietly amass a short position and then release stunning negative news that you had uncovered and watch the stock price tank.

These days it is more likely that online investors will notice a large short, and drive the price of the stock up until the person holding the short gets margin called and loses all of their money. The shorters then provide the liquidity you need to get out of the position. There used to be good money in shorting terrible companies, but in an age where hordes of armchair investors can drive the price of GameStop to the moon that strategy is just too risky.

I suspect that these streams are costing Youtube money. They can't monetize them, and they have to spend effort shutting them down or they get in serious legal trouble. If things persist I suspect that Youtube changes its live streaming service in ways that make this impossible.

We will see though.

The problem, of course, is that Sports content is paying more than its fair share of the bill for all televised content. It is easy to see the large bills and assume that sports is a cost center, but the reality is that sport tends to pay its own way, while scripted television is much more of a gamble. To a certain extent that is why most scripted television these days is so formulaic. The television studios know that they can make money with modern versions of "The Rockford Files." That's why NCIS is in its quadzillionth season.

Severance is great, but it is a prime example of what I am talking about. Apple has spent billions of dollars on content at this point, and they are still hemorrhaging money. People like their shows, but they aren't lining up to pay for them. Shoresy is in a better spot, but only because Disney is doing its level best to tie Shoresy to ESPN and other sports related content that people are willing to pay for. The folks wanting to buy ESPN can get the rest of the Disney bundle for pennies. You can't just buy ESPN, you have to buy it with a television package. Disney does this because they know that if people have their other channels, then they tend to watch them. They are willing to pay a premium, however, for sports.

Hulu is cheap, and you can get it by itself. The same goes for AppleTV. All of these cost Netflix amounts of money $12 (or so) a month. When I worked for Sling it's entire packaging was based around making it possible to bundle ESPN for less than anyone else. If you want ESPN the least you can pay is $45/month, and that doesn't give you the other channel's sports package, that you probably want if you are a sports fan as well. It is very likely that the team that you follow will have at least one game on ESPN's competitors. That means that if you are purchasing from Sling you need the blue package as well (which is another $45, or bundled will total $60). You could easily sign up for all of the non-sports streaming channels for less than an Orange+Blue package (which once again is as competitively priced as it is possible to do). I was just looking at Disney's bundle, and you can get Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN for $35/month, which is definitely the least expensive way to get ESPN these days. That's with ads, which are added even to VOD content. If you want to watch your VOD content without ads that's another $10. Linear content (like watching cable) always comes with ads. Sports fans can't dodge ads ever.

I bring up pricing like this to make it clear which parts of television customers are actually willing to pay money for. If you don't want to pay for sports (and I don't blame you), then you can easily pay $12/month and switch between streaming providers and watch whatever shows you want to watch. All of those services allow you to easily stop and continue your subscription, and none of the content is likely to go away. Heck, chances are good that, if you wait long enough, you can watch the shows that you want on one of the free services. In most cases they are literally giving away old scripted content. The problem with this model, is that it doesn't make Hollywood enough money to be profitable with their current structure. The reason that Disney (and everyone else) bundle channels the way that they do is because they know that they can't afford to gamble on scripted content unless they bundle those risks with the proven money generation of sports content. More and more people like you, who don't want to pay for sports content, are opting for less expensive alternatives that still get them the shows that they want.

This market contraction is why Hollywood is so focused on franchises that have historically been popular. So instead of new shows we get derivatives of things that were popular in the past. Scripted content is risky, and as it gets uncoupled from less risky sports content producers do whatever they can to hedge their bets. So we get a re-re-remake of the TMNTs, Spiderman, or we get another cop show. Recently we have also been blessed with shows that have been popular in other countries or markets (that is legitimately cool in my opinion), but that is also likely to dry up as entertainment becomes more global.

Which leaves what can be done on Youtube budgets for anything remotely risky. Which is fine, I suppose. Personally, I like watching people restore old sailboats. That's not something that is ever going to be more than a niche market, but on Youtube that's enough of a market to make it financially viable for a few people. Maybe with AI it will even become possible to do good SciFi with that sort of a budget. Who knows? One thing is certain, it is definitely interesting times ahead.

Plus, IBM owns RedHat. So that's probably something. Then again, maybe that is the hyper growth software and services bit that they want to keep.

My hyperbole got the better of me again. You are not the only one. Little House on the Prairie is remarkably good television. It definitely beats doom-scrolling on your phone.

Getting together with my college friends to watch Star Trek the Next Generation was awesome. Those are definitely core memories. But even then there were issues. I never got into Babylon 5 because I worked while that was on. I recently decided to watch them, but it's not the same thing.

My kids (I have 6) get together every Sunday to watch "Dancing with the Stars." They are always a bit sad that they are days late to be able to vote, but the fact that they can watch on their time means they get to watch it together. I feel that's progress. Quite a few of those style of shows have call in votes specifically to drive viewership at the same time to boost numbers.

Netflix Disc was awesome. I also miss that a lot. If you aren't interested in live content you should be able to get the shows that you want at an incredible deal. These days I personally mostly watch Youtube. But I sometimes sign up for a month of one of the services to watch a particular show. They basically all allow you to cancel any time. There are also DVR tools that record over the air television that are pretty good. Depending on where you live you might be surprised at what is available. Plus, there's always piracy. Another advantage that sports television has over serial shows is that live television is much harder to pirate. Chances are good that your friendly neighborhood pirate site has all of the episodes of whatever it is that you want to watch.

If you are paying sports fan prices for television without watching sports, then you are definitely not getting a good deal.

If they could get people to give up $20 in exchange for ESPN and ABC Sports that is the best deal they could possibly make. Most of YouTubeTV's customers pay for the sports package. They could get the other content somewhere else for less. YouTubeTV is hoping that they can stave off the mass exodus as people realize that they won't be able to watch the games that they signed up for, and that their cable TV replacement is basically worthless.

You have this almost completely backwards. Sports fans currently subsidize scripted television to an almost outrageous extent. I used to work for Sling. Disney doesn't have to push ESPN and ABC Sports on the providers. It has to convince them to carry (and pay for) the rest of the channels. If sports fans could get access to the games that they wanted without having to pay for scripted television scripted television as we know it would disappear overnight. What we would be left with is the sort of thing that is currently available on Youtube.

As an example, Apple has spent over $20 billion on content over the last 6 years. Amazon Prime, on the other hand, spends just over $1 billion a year for Thursday Night Football. That's basically the worst possible NFL football game, and it still regularly has about half as many concurrent viewers as Apple TV has total subscribers. That's basically the case across the board. Sports is why YouTubeTV currently costs about 4 times as much per month as the most expensive Netflix package or 5 times what Disney+ costs. Sports fans are willing to pay for their television in a way that other viewers simply aren't willing to do. Disney and the other networks are doing their best to keep sports tied to the rest of their empires. It will be interesting to see how things end up.

For most people paying for live television ESPN (and ABC Sports) is the part that they actually want. That's why these negotiations always happen during Football season. Disney is trying to get YouTubeTV to pay for a bunch of channels whose viewership drops every year and they use the access to the live sporting events that people care about as a club.

The DVR revolution was a huge deal, and it also created a split between scripted and unscripted television. Once DVRs came out they quickly became a very popular way to watch scripted television. Since you were already time shifting your programs, it made sense to also skip over the ads. Live sports (and news), on the other hand tend to be watched live. People might wander off to get a snack when the commercials come on, but they rarely miss all of the commercials. Some sports fans will record a game and watch it later, but in those cases where they can't watch the game they mostly just watch the highlights. This is so popular that highlight news shows (with advertisements that generally don't get skipped, or are embedded in the content) are basically the most popular type of news.

Heck, for many sports fans the ads are basically part of the experience. They tune in early for pre-show events where there is nothing but advertisements. The talking heads either promote later shows, or they do product placement spots literally for hours.

Viewers of scripted shows, on the other hand, often go to great lengths to skip the ads. They set up VCRs and later Tivos and other DVRs. They bought (or rented and ripped) DVDs so they could own a pristine copy. Heck, as you know that's literally how Netflix started their business.

That's why Hollywood complained (at every step) about these technologies, while the sports people largely didn't care. They worked for the same companies, but their realities were very different. Moving into the modern era it is becoming more and more clear that sports fans have been subsidizing other television fans for decades. As the needs and wants of these two groups grow further and further apart expect interesting things to happen.

Right now Disney capitalizes with every negotiation on the fact that many YouTubeTV subscribers are actually sports television subscribers looking for a reliable way to ESPN and ABC Sports. If they can't watch ESPN on Saturday and miss their alma mater play the big game they aren't going to be mollified with a $20 on their bill. They are going to cancel. So the average sports consumer pays for hundreds of channels that they never use, and their money pays for 90% of the television that gets produced, despite the fact that they don't watch it. As this disconnect becomes more and more apparent expect Hollywood to have an even harder time funding the creation of content.

I definitely tend to speak in hyperbole. I actually appreciate that reminder. That sort of thing really doesn't help make any of my points.

The reality is that there are lots of people that have televisions on all day long, and there are plenty of businesses (for example restaurants) where they might have multiple televisions on all day long. Television is still a very powerful way to reach a fairly wide audience, even if live television has fallen a long. Heck, much of the content that gets the most views on platforms like YouTube also tend to be established television shows. So even if people aren't watching the content live it is still getting watched in a timely manner. And to advertisers (and viewers) that definitely matters.

My point is that most people, especially most people on /., have absolutely no idea how much sports carries our current television programming. Netflix was originally able to buy rights to so much VOD (video on demand) content in the early days because no one thought that it had any value. Streaming pre-recorded shows is technically easy, and even in the era of cable there were only so many channels that were feasible. Netflix showed that you could turn this into a business, if you had a big enough portfolio. Even still a premium Netflix package costs $25, and you probably get it subsidized with your phone carrier. A cable subscription, with live television, and Disney pushing up the fees is at least double that. If you want ESPN it's probably closer to triple that.

Not only are people willing to pay money for sports, but sporting events have a proven track record of putting people in seats, and even keeping them there during commercials. That's why Superbowl ads are so ridiculously expensive. Advertisers realized that people were actually watching the spots during the games.

To give you an example of how skewed the numbers are individual NFL football games regularly have more viewers than Apple TV has subscribers, and they air three to four competing NFL games basically every Sunday. We think of television in terms of Hollywood and the shows that they produce, but the reality is that most of the television that we watch is just filler for the next sporting event. Since the commercialiation of television these two types of shows have worked together to build the market that collectively we call "television," and serials got most of the credit for the growth. Hollywood has always been very good at self-promotion. However, it has always been live sports that has had the largest audiences. People come together to watch Superbowls, Olympics, etc. As our modern way of watching increasingly divides live television from scripted television we are likely going to see far less money going towards scripted television. My Apple TV is germane. Apple has spent billions of dollars trying to create a scripted television service that people will pay money for, with very limited success. Amazon Prime did far better by paying $1 Billion a year for Thursday Night Football.

If you really like scripted television, you might want to consider paying more for subscriptions to some of Hollywood's services. Personally, I like watching people restore old sailboats. That's pretty niche, but in a world where YouTube has made publishing content so inexpensive there are content providers that apparently can make a living that way. So I tend to agree with your opinion that it is fun to watch evil tear away at evil.

Disney does this every time it negotiates its contract, and it is always during Football season. I used to work for Sling they did this to us twice while I worked there.

This is how live television actually works these days. Disney has a pile of channels that they can't hardly give away. Remember, we aren't talking about shows (although most shows don't matter either). We are talking about channels. When was the last time you channel surfed trying to find something on the air? My guess is that it was decades ago. Well, all those channels still exist, and the live television providers still pretend that someone cares whether re-runs of Wizard of Waverly Place is playing on whatever channel reruns of that show play on these days.

It's 2025. Sane people watch pre-recorded stuff when they have time. The industry calls that Video on Demand. They stream these shows from someone that let's them watch when they want to watch, and that keeps track of where they are when the stop. They don't tune in every day at 3:30 PM and watch reruns of their favorite show. If you are old enough, like me, you probably remember sitting down with all of your friends every week to watch the newest episode of Star Trek the Next Generation, or whatever. Remember how terrible that was. You had to make an appointment to watch television or you missed an episode and you couldn't watch it until it was in re-runs.

Well, those days are so dead no one even mourns them any more.

Disney knows this, and YouTubeTV knows this as well. Everyone involved in live television knows this. The only reason that people even have live television subscriptions is so that they can watch sports while the game is happening live. And in the United States that means that mostly boils down to watching football.

So every few years each of the live television companies (all of the cable companies, essentially) have to renegotiate with Disney. Every year the story is precisely the same. Viewership on everyone's live channels is down at least 25%. The market is shedding customers like crazy. Disney wants to raise prices at least 30%, and they also want the companies to carry (and pay for) a wide array of channels that absolutely no one watches. Meanwhile, the broadcasters just wants access to ESPN and ABC Sports. The reason that people pay money for YouTubeTV is that want to be able to watch the live sports content, and to a lesser extent the live news. Even that basically amounts to the sports news. They want to watch the College football games on Saturday, and the NFL games on Sunday. They want to be able to have a baseball game playing in the background, or catch their NBA team play. They want to hear the talking heads talk about sports, and they want to see the highlights. To accomplish this they are willing to pay approximately 4 times the cost of the fanciest Netflix subscription, maybe more if they have to rush out and sign up for another service because YouTubeTV no longer has access to ESPN and ABC Sports.

Before you think that YouTubeTV is probably gouging their customers you probably should know that YouTubeTV almost certainly pays basically every penny that their customers pay them directly to the content providers like Disney. All of the providers do this, but Disney is by far the worst. In Disney's defense they have the content that people actually want to see. Sling used the entirety of the proceeds from its subscribers to pay the various provider fees, and I actually suspect that YouTubeTV was subsidizing its customers. With the packages that they carry I suspect that they sold packages at a loss. So when Disney comes back and asks for more, with the overall pie shrinking every year. It is no wonder that YouTubeTV opted to turn out the lights.

One thing is certain, this definitely isn't about Jimmy Kimmel. That sort of content has already been moved irrevocably to normal YouTube. Absolutely no one is watching it on live television. Jimmy's return had just over 6 million viewers and was basically a miracle. Now it is back to around 1 million viewers and it probably gets more actual views from the spots on YouTube than on all of the cable providers combined. To give you a frame of reference, the worst NFL games are the Thursday Night Football games and even poor outings have 14 million viewers.