PanthersATL

It's more about providing a way for CNN to continue to make money as cable subscriptions (and the associated cash inflow) are cut. While the primary CNN news should still be available "for free" on OTT boxes and supported by advertising, CNN+ is looking to provide some sort of in-depth storytelling that they don't have the time/ability to cover on their main news feed. CNN's Headline News with Lynn Russell and the other anchors was fantastic. All the news you needed to hear in 30m chunks. Worked great until local cable companies decided to splice in local news breaks in the final 5 mins where HL would normally be covering lifestyle/entertainment clips that they had been promoting earlier in the 30m clock. Ugh.

Forgot to add: LOKI on Disney+. A look at a different area of the Avengers universe. Its a fun action series that supposedly helps to setup the next phase of the Marvel Universe (kinda like what Wandavision did too). SCHMIGADOON on AppleTV+. If you like Broadway musicals (and who doesn't?), imagine what it could be like if you were literally trapped in one. Think Groundhog Day mixed with some Rogers & Hammerstein production numbers.

Wellington Paranormal - CW. Three seasons of goofiness have been filmed by the makers behind WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS. Season 1 just started airing a week or so ago, catch up on previously aired episodes on the CW website. Taking place in the WWDitS universe, this show follows a New Zealand police department's various investigations into weird happenings around town. Think X-FILES meets AIRPLANE! and The Office. Speaking of.... What We Do in the Shadows season 3 starts up in September. Season 37 of THE CHALLENGE begins early August on MTV. It's Survivor, but if it was played mostly with the same competitors every season. The rules and setup change from year to year, so the contestants never know what curveballs will be thrown at them. You may not care for the personalities of individual people on the show, but from a production viewpoint, it's turned into one of the best (if not THE best) produced reality competition shows out there. TJ Lavin deserves some recognition for what he brings to the table as host. AMC's KEVIN CAN F* HIMSELF is a black comedy/drama that some may find a bit off on its style. Part cheesy 90's sitcom, part reminiscent of the Sopranos, the show follows the beaten-down wife (Annie Murphy, who played Alexis from the award-winning Schitt's Creek) and her goal of trying to kill her idiot sitcom husband. Early word on the street is that this could be another Emmy nominated turn for Murphy.

Who's this? (Wrong answers only?)

KEM or COPAG playing cards are generally seen as the "best" plastic playing cards. I've also had good experience with the 12-pack of Bicycle cards available at the local Sam's Club or Costco (I prefer the Big Pips because they're a bit more fun and easier to see across the table when the dealer is laying out the community cards, but that's a personal preference. Bonus for using a 12-pack? Once the decks start getting dinged up you have spare decks to swap in as needed. If you're doing tournament - which some folks prefer since it puts everyone on an even $ playing field - then you'll probably want to get some freebie poker timer/blind app to keep track of when the blinds will go up. Some tokens to indicate BB, SB, and Dealer are usually helpful too. Make sure you have enough chips to cover the denominations you're playing. A standard 200-chip poker set may not provide a 12 person, two table NL tournament with adequate chip coverage. Perhaps @Cary Kollins can offer more advice on that front.

No issue inserting/replacing national or regional ads with localized ads. Cable networks and streamers do it all the time. National broadcasts usually reserve the ad spot at the :50 for local ad sales, which generally are used by the local affiliate to pimp their late night news or other specialty programming in addition to any premium local advertisers that are around. Broadcast commercials are pretty much hard-coded to :30 or :60 spots, so it's relatively easy to do a 1:1 replacement. Streaming gets a bit more difficult, as you may end up in a situation where a 1:1 replacement isn't possible based on advertiser fill rules. You could end up replacing a :30 with a :60, resulting in either a late rejoin (where you miss the first :30 of the next segment) *or* the stream itself is then delayed by :30 until the next commercial break where they will make up for that timing overrun by inserting fewer commercials (hopefully) to bring the listener/viewer back closer to live.

*SOMEBODY* is paying for it. And if that somebody is distributing their feed without the express permission of the NFL and its broadcast partners, where any other use of this telecast or any pictures, descriptions, or accounts of the game without the NFL's consent.... then the FBI should come knocking on their door. They won't, but that disclaimer gives the FBI and the NFL the opportunity to do so. They won't necessarily go after the recipients of the feeds, but they *could*. Think back to the Napster/Limewire days of illegal file sharing. Once Apple and other technology leaders (along with the copyright holders) realized that people will pay for a subscription service to listen to "any song in the world", the need to go illegal diminished greatly. The artists are getting screwed over from a royalty payment perspective, but that's for a different thread elsewhere. The NFL is smart - they realize they're leaving money on the table by locking in to the existing Sunday Ticket concept. They want to grow the fanbase, and there are plenty of people who'd be willing to buy a single game each week for $X without it affecting/cannibalizing ticket sales.

Continuing the previous threads about the future of Sunday Ticket -- a new entrant has entered the bidding war. Apple is putting a proposal together that would bring Sunday Ticket to AppleTV+. (You wouldn't need the actual AppleTV streaming box, but would still need to subscribe to the + service) Apple isn't the only streaming service or network kicking the tires on Sunday Ticket. As we've said in those previous threads, the NFL wants their money, but they also want to go with a service that can provide the largest audience as well. Is Apple the right choice here? I'd suggest that if you're looking at strictly streaming, go with Amazon and use the success they've had with the Prime games so far. ESPN+ is also viable for a streaming partner since it's a natural tie-in to the Disney+ audience/subscriber base, although ESPN's live coverage can be spotty at times (see the finale of the Hot Dog Eating Contest last week as an oddly timed fail on their broadcast). There's still time. But how would you feel if it went to Apple vs a different partner other than DirecTV? https://www.macrumors.com/2021/07/09/apple-nfl-sunday-ticket-talks/

Taking a step back from the money piece -- any commentary on whether a 3 year old should have a "favorite sandwich", and that it's from Starbucks?

Amazon Prime is offering 2 months of "select channels" for 99 cents during Prime Days. Among the opportunities: Starz Showtime Paramount+ Discovery+ AMC+ EPIX and more As seen on the "TV Recommendations" thread, lots of good stuff to binge on any of these + network offerings.

What about the alternative "Chugga-Lugga Choo Choo Choo"?

Agreed. that's in the OP: FIRST: this goes without saying --- "good for them, and we wish them well. Obviously what they have works for them".

If you need one ---> "The Roku Ultra 4K HDR streaming device is $30 off at Walmart, Best Buy, and Amazon today, which drops the price to $69. This is currently Roku’s high-end model, and it apparently has 50 percent more range than the previous model, with a faster quad-core processor that makes channels launch faster" I suspect that there will be similar/more streaming device deals as we head into Amazon Prime Days

As seen in https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/10/business/starbucks-shortages.html This 33-year-old is treating his 3yo with a $5 Starbucks sandwich to go with his own $5 coffee habit. No word on whether she's also getting a coffee order, or how often they make this trip. If it's once a week as a Sunday morning treat, that's one thing. If it's every day, then we have a problem. Most retirement stories talk about how you should stop (minimize) ordering out the fancy coffees. What isn't talked about are stories like this one that bring up how young parents are also using their expendable(?) money to treat their children to the Starbucks experience when the kids could possibly be perfectly happy with a Pop-Tart or Breakfast Hot Pocket at home instead.

I'm curious about how it took 9 years before the twins arrived. Maybe she had said she didn't want kids until she was 30? He has a 20-year old son, so maybe they were waiting until he was 18 to take that step. He's going to be the 75 year-old at the twins' graduation, fielding questions about how proud a grandfather he must be, with his 20 year old son having to continually say that he's not their father. In their favor, they must have enough in common over the past 11 years to maintain the relationship to the point where children are a thing.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/im-59-my-wife-is-33-we-have-2-year-old-twins-i-pay-for-my-mother-in-laws-rent-the-time-has-come-for-me-to-cut-the-cord-11623314458 While the entire Q&A may be interesting to those who are enjoy reading money/retirement-related "Dear Abby" type columns, let's focus on the opening paragraph: The author says that he's 59, his wife is 33, and they've been together 11 years. No word on whether they've been married that long or anything regarding how they met. I don't know if that's even relevant. They've been together since he was 48 and she was 22. Using the "half your age + 7" as the lower-end boundary for how young you could reasonably date, at 59 you shouldn't be dating anybody younger than 36 years old. At 48, that cutoff should be 31 years old. FIRST: this goes without saying --- "good for them, and we wish them well. Obviously what they have works for them". That being said, it's a more entertaining conversation topic to throw in "what the hell are they doing together?"

SmartTV makes things "easy", but is starting to become problematic for consumers. Vizio announced with their most recent quarterly filing that they made almost as much money that quarter by inserting/selling advertising and viewer tracking info on their SmartTV platform than they did selling hardware. https://investors.vizio.com/news/news-details/2021/VIZIO-HOLDING-CORP.-Reports-Q1-2021-Financial-Results/default.aspx (approx $38m vs $48m) Roku, which started as a set-top box (OTT, or Over The Top), has gotten into producing their own exclusive content in addition to trying to be the best way to access as many different provider apps as possible. Peacock is just now finally getting onto the Samsung TV platform as of this morning, which should help their overall availability and usage. Some cable companies are contemplating making their cable boxes "smarter" to compete with Rokus and smart TVs, but they may find themselves fighting an uphill battle there -- it may be in their own best interests to be solely a service provider to get that broadband into the home rather than facilitate transactions between Netflix and others -- unless the cable companies get a cut of thae transaction fee, there's nothing in it for them to be an order taker.

Here is an outdated calculator that will provide that answer to you - all services = $121 monthly. https://www.theverge.com/a/online-tv-stream-price-guide From Bloomberg a few months ago: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-26/disney-netflix-hikes-bring-cost-of-cord-cutter-package-to-92 Per the article: Nearly a third of households subscribe to four or more streaming services, and that leaves out the majority of news and sports content

I didn't say you'd have to switch providers - but that you may have to switch plans under your provider. It all depends whether your provider can/will apply the credit to any plan they have OR if they will only support the credit under specific plans. Some fineprint I've seen from individual ISPs suggest that they may not apply the credit to unlimited data or higher-speed plans, but it would apply to some of their lower-service/lower-cost plans.

Note: It may require you to switch plans, which may not end up being a desired outcome. After you received a notice that you have qualified for the program, households must contact a participating provider to select an Emergency Broadband Benefit eligible service plan.

Content creators are focused on reaching a particular target audience. It's that target audience that's being sold. CBS has a particular demographic vs MTV's demographic. NPR podcast listeners have a particular demographic vs Joe Rogan's podcast. The advertisers aren't buying into the content - they're buying into the audience that is being targeted. A production company (whether it be Warner Brothers' FRIENDS, or Sony's JEOPARDY, or Dreamwork's VOLTRON .. whatever) sells the program to a network/channel with the right demographics to be distributed. That's how the production gets paid. Now it's up to the network/channel to make their money by selling advertising (or whatever else it takes to recoup their investment costs). SURVIVOR costs, let's say, $1m per episode. If they can get an in-show sponsorship, like Burger King, to provide some prizes and possibly lower the overall episode costs, then that's more money for the production that doesn't go to the network. Local channels get paid by the cable companies to be carried; that's why you often see local channels taken off the air during payment disputes -- the station wants to be fairly paid for their news production and their network licenses, while the carrier is trying to make money by paying out less in carriage fees. One way or the other, someone is going to get paid for the content creation; tools/technology/talent/TIME isn't free. If it's not advertising, then what? One way or the other, the ISPs are going to get paid for carrying that data to your house, whether it be through excess bandwidth charges or via cable fees. As broadband usage goes up with higher-and-higher quality streams, the days of low-cost monthly all-you-can-eat high speed bandwidth plans are going to go away. Switching to mobile-only from broadband (5G and up) isn't going to help either - you'll just get your connection throttled. You'll still have access, it just won't be at high speeds. I don't have solutions to the above - but somebody is going to end up paying something. I'd rather it be the advertisers than it come out of my own pocket if given a choice. (disclaimer: I'd rather pay the extra $2/month for Hulu+ commercial free than sit through the 2m of commercials in a Hulu program -- at least Hulu and others give that option)

Broadcast TV isn't free (it hasn't been since.... well, practically forever). *somebody* has to pay for the creation of the content. If not advertising, then how?

Except Discovery+ and HBOMax have determined that they can't compete with Netflix and Amazon, so they're merging forces into a single package deal (similar to the Disney+/Hulu/ESPN package, I suppose) I see more broadcaster (heh, "content providers") doing more consolidation until we have streaming-only packages that will be (roughly) the same price as what you originally had with a traditional cable bill. The only difference is that by separating out to smaller (but still separate) packages, that will give you some concept of ala cart. Only want ESPN+ during football season? Done. Need Paramount+ for The MTV Challenge? Gotcha covered. Discovery keeps adding more and more exclusive content across their entire library of channels? Can't easily pick only HGTV for a cheap price, might as well get all of them. Presto - you now have a cable bill again.

For those of you with cable subscriptions, do you like that you can log in and access any of the streaming/on demand versions of channels like History, Starz, or Showtime if they're part of your package? Is keeping the cable subscription worth that convenience of "you've already paid for it, so go and watch it?"

We'll start easy. Which services do you personally pay for or subscribe to (if they're free), and why do you like those services enough to pay for 'em? We can cover those services that you "borrow" or otherwise obtain under the table a bit later... Some of the options should be (in no particular order).... Netflix HBO Max HULU ESPN+ Paramount+ Disney+ AppleTV+ Amazon Prime Peacock Free: Crackle Crunchyroll Plex Tubi IMDb TV PlutoTV VUDU TV Alternatives: (pick almost any individual channel, they have some sort of service) Viceland YouTube Premium Hulu + Live TV Sling