True. But it’s also not accurate to suggest no one watched the game because it was on streaming. That’s the future of TV viewing, as you well know, and streamers and cord cutters are the target audience for the NFL because they are younger and gamble more. No one watches the NFL like my dad did…on an old black and white round screen, with me adjusting the rabbit ears with him yelling “to the left…your left…YOUR LEFT…YOU OTHER LEFT”
I never suggested that no one was watching the game. I just said the game was a frozen turd, which it was.
Fun Fact: I was at Top Golf yesterday and, upon retiring to the bar, we asked if they could put on the Man U - Spurs game. “Is that on Peacock? We don’t have Peacock,” we were told.
Well, you may have thought the game was not entertaining, but that’s hardly a result of it being on Peacock. And you suggested that no one watched it. Lots of people did. More people it than watched anything else.
Is that unusual? Frankly, I’d only vaguely heard of Peacock before this week, so I don’t know if it’s something most places would have or not.
Again, I never suggested that no one watched. It was a turd of a game - IMHO - because Miami offered almost nothing by way of a threat. Once KC had a couple of scores on the board it was only going to go one way.
Agreed, that the game being shit is not the Romans’ Peacock’s fault. I just found it delightfully ironic that NBC paid a fortune to try and sell subscriptions to their streaming platform and ended up streaming shit.
The reason that Top Golf didn’t have Peacock - like, many sports bar-type venues I suspect - is that you need it for sports only if you are opening at 8am on weekends for a Premier League crowd. Not many sports bars have lunchtime/evening customers demanding they show re-runs of “Friends”.
So what exactly did you mean by “very few people outside of soccer fans got to see.” That most of the people who streamed it were soccer fans who just tuned in for the hell of it?
I don’t think they really care about the quality of the football played. And again, I just think it’s curious that you’re in the crowd decrying it being streamed. I would have thought you would be in the first wave chant of “adapt or die”.
Well Mrs. Hawk can cross Top Golf off of her list of places to hang out on Saturday nights.
Nope. Simply that Peacock’s existing demographics appears to be the likes of me - soccer fans - and the likes of Mrs HH - “Friends” etc. fans. Nothing wrong with that, and the goal of this whole stunt by NBC was to force NFL fans outside of their existing client base into signing up for the one game.
As I said, it makes sense for the PL (and Friends) to be on a streaming platform. An NFL playoff game be downgraded to a streaming platform in order to for the NFL and NBC to make a cash grab from Joe Public just doesn’t sit well with me.
Point of order: Friends is on Max
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Does anyone even watch Max anymore?
In case there’s some confusion, Max is not the former SkineMax offering. It’s HBO’s rebranded HBOMax service. It occasionally has watchable things.
Just another consequence of America’s non-enforcement or deliberate neutering of anti-trust laws around media ownership.
As we’ve already seen with newspapers and radio, media owners consolidate and basically kill themselves by removing all competition, and thus removing all motivation to make a quality product. Then they blame it on technology-which is an accelerator, not a root cause.
Cory Doctorow describes this sad-but-predictable trajectory as enshittification . It’s a really useful concept for understanding why the Internet (and media) sucks worse than ever.
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I have at least 6 different streaming services to choose from in addition to a billion cable channels. How is this an antitrust issue?
I’d start with a little research on who owns those streaming services, how they came to be, what effect that has had on creators, etc. There are a lot of articles on the recent writers’ strike that can help explain why things suck and why viewing your favorite shows (including the NFL) is only going to get harder and more expensive.
We had every episode of Friends on DVD. That doesn’t mean we don’t have to watch it every time it’s on TV though.
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I would argue it’s not just about a cash grab. The world is full of cord cutters and streamers only. This is also about nabbing that demographic for the future.
Well, it also didn’t help that the game was played in ridiculously cold weather. That’s the big reason the product sucked.
I saw that the number of cable subscribers is down to 1989 levels
I finally dropped our cable TV recently since GF has gotten used to streaming as the way to watch. Was talking to the Frontier customer service rep and she said they’re not even actively selling TV packages anymore but have partnered with YouTube TV for selling streaming packages.
The problem with cord cutting is no Astros unless you pay as much for Fubo as you would cable. I was hoping the new Astros/Rockets network would show up on Hulu or something but it looks like another year of only Fox and ESPN broadcasts for us uncorded folk.
The only reason I still have cable
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There are ways around that to see Astros games. Though they are rather convoluted.