<story><title>ESPN Loses 621,000 Subscribers; Worst Month in Company History</title><url>http://www.outkickthecoverage.com/espn-loses-621-000-subscribers-worst-month-in-company-history-102916</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Phlow</author><text>I would pay ESPN $10 a month for an ESPN streaming app that had access to all the college football games (no blackouts), alone, as long as it didn&amp;#x27;t require a cable subscription.  The current ESPN streaming app is garbage, compared to Netflix, and other on-demand interfaces.  It&amp;#x27;s not available on my Smart TV.  The quality of the streaming is terrible.  It&amp;#x27;s slow to bring up video.  The ads are repetitive and annoying, and it&amp;#x27;s a second class citizen with wait screens while local ads are up on broadcast.&lt;p&gt;Comcast recently decided to institute a 1TB&amp;#x2F;month cap in my area, with a charge of $10 per 50GB after up to $200, or $50 for unlimited (opt-in, by the sounds).  There are no technical reasons why they did this, it was entirely to gain more revenue to make up for the cord cutters.  Their own streaming service doesn&amp;#x27;t apply to their data cap.&lt;p&gt;The whole thing is garbage and needs to be completely changed.  The moment Google Fiber or something better comes along in my area, I&amp;#x27;m going internet only, and I&amp;#x27;ll just go without until they realize how badly they&amp;#x27;ve managed to move with the trends and start fixing it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>IBM</author><text>Would you spend $25-35 per month for ESPN? Because that&amp;#x27;s what it would probably cost if it wasn&amp;#x27;t subsidized by the bundle.&lt;p&gt;Your answer to that question may in fact be yes, but the economics don&amp;#x27;t work out. Disney would make more money getting $6 from every cable subscriber than try to scratch and claw to scale up an OTT service like Netflix that would inevitably cannibalize their current business.&lt;p&gt;The only thing that will change the economics is when the market forces their hand, which is what this story is about.</text></comment>
<story><title>ESPN Loses 621,000 Subscribers; Worst Month in Company History</title><url>http://www.outkickthecoverage.com/espn-loses-621-000-subscribers-worst-month-in-company-history-102916</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Phlow</author><text>I would pay ESPN $10 a month for an ESPN streaming app that had access to all the college football games (no blackouts), alone, as long as it didn&amp;#x27;t require a cable subscription.  The current ESPN streaming app is garbage, compared to Netflix, and other on-demand interfaces.  It&amp;#x27;s not available on my Smart TV.  The quality of the streaming is terrible.  It&amp;#x27;s slow to bring up video.  The ads are repetitive and annoying, and it&amp;#x27;s a second class citizen with wait screens while local ads are up on broadcast.&lt;p&gt;Comcast recently decided to institute a 1TB&amp;#x2F;month cap in my area, with a charge of $10 per 50GB after up to $200, or $50 for unlimited (opt-in, by the sounds).  There are no technical reasons why they did this, it was entirely to gain more revenue to make up for the cord cutters.  Their own streaming service doesn&amp;#x27;t apply to their data cap.&lt;p&gt;The whole thing is garbage and needs to be completely changed.  The moment Google Fiber or something better comes along in my area, I&amp;#x27;m going internet only, and I&amp;#x27;ll just go without until they realize how badly they&amp;#x27;ve managed to move with the trends and start fixing it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sseagull</author><text>&amp;gt; The moment Google Fiber or something better comes along in my area&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve got some bad news - Google has &amp;quot;paused&amp;quot; its fiber rollout. With that on life support and Verizon FIOS rollout seemingly dead, I don&amp;#x27;t see much changing anytime soon.</text></comment>