Ya, and those rabbit ears are useless now.
Nope. I get NBC, ABC, Fox, CBS, CW, and PBS; plus the (99% worthless, I admit) rerun wad channels MeTV, Dabl, Circle, Justice, Antenna TV, Catchy Comedy, Comet, Charge, TBD, Escape, Grit, Rewind TV, Ion, Court TV, Bounce, Laff, Defy, H&I, Quest, and This; plus the trashsport channel Stadium, leftist news commentary channel Newsy; home shopping scam channels, JTV, HSN and QVC; and PBS World and PBS Kids, all on a $40 set of "rabbit ears". I then connect that to a box I bought on Amazon for less than $150 that streams the channels to an app so I don't have to wire the antenna to each TV and I can also watch on my phone, plus it records. We have a whole forum on the subject.
Yes, I pay for DirecTV. That is my choice. Life is too short to do otherwise. But it brings up two important points.
First, most people can get TV, for free, with an antenna. Yes, there are people who cannot, and Big Media and the lapdog FCC should have fixed that decades ago, but most people can. And from Day One to next January, this has included the NFL Playoffs. Now, to pump up its money losing Peacock service, whose offering (which are, well, weird) the vast majority of Americans have reviewed and said no thank you to, that will be no longer the case. That is called "greed" and, despite the movie tag line, greed is not good.
But it goes beyond that. Sports are now a spread out on different services. Before, with the consumer protected by the bundle, one bill, one service, all the sports. Affordable. The consumer, protected. Now, every service has sports, except to the only profit making one (Netflix) and stand along Hulu (which most people buy the set, which includes ESPN+).
I hear this complaint all the time in the lounge I hang out at and on line in other sites. "I just want to pay for _______ball one time." People don't like the fact that one needs six services to just get the sports. Plus access to the OTA networks, plus access to real ESPN (not plus) and its imitators, and the local RSN AKA a linear TV subscription.
Second, read these pages, go back a few years. The whole cord cutting (actually cord switching, true cord cutters live off antennas, YouTube, Rumble and FAST) was getting away from this "sports tax". It is true that MOST people really don't like sports. Lots of people know people in their lives who really don't like sports, but who pay, or used to pay, for linear TV. I know plenty. Cord switching was a smart move, in the short run, for those people. If you don't like sports, making do with just streaming can save you a little money.
Well, the sports tax is back. Bigger than ever. On every service, but one. All I can say is welcome home and see I told you so.
www.nfl.com
