> <i>Dish executives said the new service would not cannibalize the company’s current business because its current offerings do not appeal to Sling TV’s target audience of 18- to 35-year-olds.</i><p>> <i>“We are not hitting the 18- to 35-year-old market today; we just aren’t,” Mr. Clayton said, adding that he knows from experience with five children between the ages of 18 and 28.</i><p>This is so refreshing to hear -- I feel that, too often, decision-makers at big media companies resist the realization he's had.<p>I hope this new product is not tied to an archaic time-based schedule as well, but rather allows viewers to watch shows on their schedule. The DVR is a stop-gap technology between time-based broadcasting and on demand viewing of all published content. Why should it matter if I wasn't home at 8pm on Sunday -- let me watch the program shown on the channel I paid for!
I've been expecting somebody to come up with this for years. I guess the HBO streaming announcement finally opened the floodgates.<p>They still are bundling a package of channels, I guess wanted a-la-carte but broadcasters would have none of that. It's probably the smallest package they were able to negotiate.<p>This is basically a TV cable provider using the internet as last-mile infrastructure. There will be lawsuits from big cable, they will lobby regulators to impose cable service fees into them.
It's an interesting first step, though I'd wager a huge percentage of that $20/mo fee is just the ESPN/ESPN2 fee. ESPN commands over $5/mo per cable subscriber even if they never watch it and you can't choose not to get ESPN on cable (without going with an absurd super-basic package which includes no other channels). So, you're forced to spend over $60 a year for nothing.
I wonder how much buy-in came from companies like ESPN who I feel are supporting existing cable providers who pay ~$5 per subscriber? If I can triple it to $60/mo and get many (all?) other sports channels, I will not hesitate to purchase.<p>I also feel this will be a big boon for the satellite company whose products were not previously available to apartment dwellers without a southern-sky view.
This is a huge first step to modern tv watching. I have DirecTV and Verizon FiOS internet, which is something like $200 per month. I am offered no bundled deals, so this is immensely appealing.<p>If they include local channels I would seriously consider giving this a try. I also hope it comes to Fire TV.<p>The other questions would be what about when you miss a show? Could you watch old episodes from the current season for free?<p>UPDATE: Looks like a DVR like functionality is not available yet and you can only watch from one device at a time. <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/05/sling-tv/" rel="nofollow">http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/05/sling-tv/</a>
In this context, AT&T's purchase of DirecTV makes a lot more sense: A fairly large subscriber base, some high demand exclusives (NFL Sunday Ticket). The whole satellite thing is just an implementation detail.<p>If the network is neutral enough that AT&T can make more money selling you out-of-market NFL games over your commoditized Comcast internet, they'll do that. If not, there's still the dishes, U-Verse, and eventually enough cellular bandwidth.
Oh, I thought that something like this already existed for the US, because we've got Foxtel Play here in Australia, and we're usually far behind everywhere else for this sort of stuff.<p>I currently pay $25AUD for a small set of channels, and watch them over the internet on my iPhone, laptop and Xbox 360. It's quite neat actually.
When my financial situation was not as good I had internet for $50 a month with no cable. I would have gladly paid $20 for ESPN. Now that I have Tivo I would rather pay the $110 a month for all the cable channels instead of $70 with fewer channels and no DVR. If this had been available I may have stuck with just internet.
The current model of bundling channels actually works really well and all the people going on about cutting the cord in the future will soon realize how much its going to cost to pay for individual channels.<p>Regular people will find that paying for cable is the better deal and will continue to do that.