10 stories where Tom hypes PlayStation Vue price rises and charts Amazon Prime’s popularity. Number 8 will shock you! With special guest Justin Robert Young.
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CordKillers: Ep. 178 – Tom Merritt: Clickbait King
Recorded: July 10 2017
Guest: Justin Robert Young
Intro Video
Primary Target
- Amazon Prime More Popular than cable!
– Research company Morningstar estimates Amazon Prime reaches 79 million US households. S&P Global Market Intelligence recently projected 90 million US households will pay for cable or satellite TV this year.
– It’s SLIGHTLY apples and oranges since Prime isn’t just for TV but it shows that Amazon is on its way to being in as many homes as cable.
– Netflix reported 50.85 mm US subs in Q1)
How to Watch
- PlayStation Vue hikes prices across the US
– Sony has removed its “Slim” packages from regions that didn’t have local live TV available. Those packages did not include broadcast networks and charged $10 less than the normal versioon of the package
– The standard Access package ($40 a month) is the cheapest one in all markets now.
– Customers on the Slim package can keep it for three months after which they must cancel or be upgraded to the $40 plan
-Sony told Dedline: “The transition to standard pricing for all markets was always part of our roadmap since we launched PlayStation Vue nationwide and began rolling out local broadcast affiliates in markets with Slim plans.”
What to Watch
What We’re Watching
Front Lines
Dispatches from the Front
I feel like I just hit the “Whammy” on this Cordkillers game of Press Your Luck…
Thanks in large part to your show, my wife and I dumped cable and picked up Playstation Vue when it launched. Aside from the Roku UI, we have been very happy with Vue. The Core Slim package provides the perfect mix of Scripps/Turner/Sports networks we want. I couldn’t replicate the ~7 channels we watch on any other providers for the cost. Most importantly, I had ability to watch every English Premier League match and the Extra Time Goal Zone when multiple games were happening at the same time. (Goal Zone was the EPL equivalent of the Red Zone Channel for the NFL.) Now, I feel like my cost savings was smashed. My Vue package is going to increase by $10/month and $50 paywall for Premier League Pass, which I had access to last season for no additional cost. It hurts more when it’s taken away. I also have Netflix, Prime and will be purchasing HBO Now for the season Game of Thrones. It’s possible I’m just a unique case, but it seems to be getting cable-level expensive again for the content I want.
I’m not sure there is any way to improve my situation with the current offerings, but any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Will these cost increases and paywalls lead to a next “level” of cord cutting/shaving options?
(Feel free to edit for length and/or grammar if you want to use my message on the show. I can provide additional clarity if you’d like.)
Thank you for all you do.
– Tyler
As someone who has dabbled and at times been really into quality scene releases over the years I have learned quite a lot about what popular opinion and standard formatting of this has been around the internet.
.. I decided to go with the flow and started following the largely considered correct way to name individual episodes. I haven’t had any issues with metadata since. THIS is the preferred way to name individual episodes for TV. If you wanted to name season 1 episode 12 it would be typed as S01E12 with S indicating season number and E indicating episode number.
As someone who works professionally at a post production facility, typing up labels and naming files for assets of episodic shows is a very frequent task. At the facility I currently work at, as well as places I’ve worked in the past, the general convention is to label any given episode in a series with:
1. The name of the series
2. Season number
3. Episode (or production*) number
4. Episode title (if one exists)
It’s also pretty common that a season number and episode number will be consolidated into one single identifier. For example, I might use “”307″” to refer to season 3, episode 7. Regardless, I could not help but laugh out loud that there are people with that much OCD that they are motivated to write an e-mail asking you to change the way you guys identify episodes on Spoilerin’Time. Keep up the good work, guys!
– Robert
Hi there, Brian, Tom and Bryce!
Just wanted to say that last night’s show was great and the explanation you made about the Televisa/Cablevisión vs Roku deal was the best I have seen or read so far.
Here in Mexico, Televisa has kind of a bad rep, since they are sort of the official spokes-channel of the Government and they pretty much own most over the air TV channels. The court case agains Roku was seen as a last ditch effort for Televisa, since they have been struggling to capture young audiences with their digital content offerings, however that’s just a reflection of the general dislike with them, since Blim (their version of Netflix) actually owns about 17% of the online streaming services, which is actually quite good if we compare with TV Streaming services from other TV Channels even in the US.
So far, the “banning” of Roku is limited. Only Office Depot and Radio Shack (yes, we still have those around) stopped selling Roku Devices. You can still get it pretty much everywhere else, from Amazon to Bestbuy to Mercado Libre to the corner electronics store. The court case continues and the focus is in stopping piracy, not the device, and as you mentioned, that content is available on the test channels.
Once again, great job on the show, and I was particularly glad to see this topic correctly commented by an impartial observer. Makes me proud of being a patreon. Way to go!
Best regards! Keep up the awesome work!
– Dan
Hey guys, I watched last week’s episode and I completely disagree with you about NBC’s launch of their soccer product that charges $50 per season to watch the games that aren’t on TV.
The way I see it, it’s a move by NBC Sports to try to stem the flow of people to cord cutting than it is their offering of a new product.
In order to have access to all of the games from the Premier League, NBC’s new paid product now forces soccer fans to continue to pay for a TV subscription plus paying $50 for the streaming service to watch the games not on TV.
There were two alternatives last season for cord cutters where you could stream every single Premier League game in the US with a subscription to PlayStation Vue or DIRECTV NOW. But with the launch of NBC’s new product, that access to all of the games has been taken away for next season. Cord cutters can still stream the games that are on TV, but they have to pay the $50 extra to NBC to get the games that aren’t televised.
NBC Sports screwed up on the launch of this service. Many soccer fans would have gladly paid to be able to access all of the matches without requiring a TV subscription. As it is now, NBC has delivered a new product that doesn’t satisfy the cord cutters nor the TV subscribers.
Keep up the great work on the show!
Cheers,
– Christopher
Links
2017 Summer Movie Draft
patreon.com/cordkillers
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