"Bally Sports is no longer available with Xfinity"
Just got this email.
Unfortunately, our programming agreement with Diamond Sports Group has expired. This means we no longer have the rights to carry their channels, including your local Bally Sports network.
The loss of this channel will result in savings that we'll pass along to you, and you'll see a monthly credit on your bill in the coming weeks. You don't need to do anything to receive your credit; we'll automatically apply it to your upcoming monthly bill statement.
We know that unexpected changes to your channel lineup can be frustrating. We've been flexible with Diamond Sports Group, who is in bankruptcy proceedings, but have been unable to reach an agreement that’s fair for our customers.
....
I'm not a big baseball fan, so I'll just wait and see what happens between now and October. Will Ch 50 get Red Wings and Pistons games again?
It's Comcraptic!
Back to listening to the Tigers on the radio.....what a throwback. I'm oddly okay with it. I won't be okay with not having the Wings, so something will have to change before that season starts.
I can listen to baseball on the radio, but I seriously cannot watch it. A live baseball game "pops" with excitement and you can see how incredible of athletes they are, but the product does not carry over to the screen at all. Yankees-Sox 9th inning in Game 6 of the ALCS, yeah, that can be watched. But the everyday 1:05 Tigers game against some other team is absolutely not watching material. On the radio, during yardwork or on the commute home? Sure. But not on the TV.
With the Tigers you'll be missing out on the best PBP guy in sports, but to each their own.
Yeah, he was a nice get. It does not move the needle for me though.
Benetti (sp?) has been very entertaining. I definitely see the talent......
Tigers have an amazing PBP baseball announcer too so it's not missing - you get the best of both worlds.
I'm with you. Hockey athleticism transfers well, where baseball is much more difficult to see. The pitching clock helps with the pace of the game, but I'd rather watch golf than baseball.
Baseball on the radio is really great. Hockey...terrible!
Bally Sports/Diamond Sports Group can't die fast enough. I'd gladly pay an Illitch/Gores backed streaming service for content. But, I refuse to give my money to these jackholes.
My streaming option for Braves games is DirecTV or Fubo packages for $70 a month. No thanks, I’ll just watch Quick Pitch highlights until MLB steps in a fixes this.
I will negotiate with Comcast after I see how little I will save with the loss of Bally. Tiger baseball is better on the radio. Other than the B10 Network, Netflix ( although I'm still recovering from Baby Reindeer) and a few other channels I'm ready to go back to an antenna.
I hate Xfinity and tell their reps this after every loss of cable or price haggle interaction. I tell them I hope they record this and share my rancor with the people at the top who clearly don't care. That goes both ways in the near future.
Told them I am cutting the cord as I did on my other place which has been wonderful and saved me $60 a month for better desired content.
I hate Xfinity and tell their reps this after every loss of cable or price haggle interaction.
So you keep telling them you are leaving? Why don’t you just leave? How many times have you whined about the change and stayed? But at least you got to vent on a call center representative who has to take shit all day!
If the customer service on the call is poor or comes with a bad attitude, then yeah I get the vitriol. But getting pissed about the price? All you're really doing is making someone's shitty day in a shitty job worse. Do you get pissed at the grocery store cashier about the prices going up too?
The only thing to do is cut the cord, and even that will have zero effect.
Thanks for the advice. I like to get context before I tell others what to do but that's just me. If I offended you or your relatives I am truly sorry.
I don't really get the context of you repeatedly complaining to a cable company's CS rep about a service you keep paying them for, but to each his own.
Honestly, I am interested to know why you keep using a service you clearly don't like. Is it just there isn't another option out there for you?
Honestly, I get it. When I was younger being a jerk on the phone got me what I wanted with Reps. As I got older I figured out being very nice, but also very firm about what I wanted got me the same thing. The first is easier and feels better, the latter is harder and requires some planning. I used to set aside 30 minutes with no obligations and something idle in the background while I waited on hold multiple times just so I could stay nice. Not everyone has that kind of time.
As far as Reps having to take people's guff? It should inspire them to get a skill or another job. Which should push up turnover and thus costs at the company trying to make a buck off people being too timid to call and fight the new rate. A lot of these companies offshored the first level interaction, so I feel even less sympathy for them.
Thankfully where I live now I have multiple internet providers. I chose the one that I don't have to negotiate every year with, just on principle.
Seconded. There is no need to be mean to the CS reps. Nice but firm is the way to go.
You realize every time you threaten to leave they lower the price you have to pay though, right? You may have to waste a couple hours a year on it but calling and threatening to leave your cable provider will lower your bill substantially.
Agree with people that say "don't take it out on the poor schmucks who answer the phone" but the policies they were required to push in the past made me run into the loving arms of AT&T when Uverse came to town (this was pre-streaming days when Comcast had a monopoly on cable). Service would glitch on the regular (on a BEAUTIFUL day, it went out literally when toe met leather against Purdue and came on for the post-game; for my trouble, they gave me 2 bucks off my bill), prices went way up regularly with no change in channels. Corporate policy at that time was definitely "milk these bastards while we can". Maybe they've improved in 20 years but I hold such a grudge that for me, the ship has sailed. Harbaugh and I enjoy our YouTube TV and I use ESPN Plus to watch virtually all Wings games.
I prefer listening to baseball on radio, but that's just me ........
But beyond that tangent, fuck all of these guys. Comcast, Bally, Sinclair, WBD, Disney, Amazon, NBCUniversal, Yahoo, and whatever 30 other networks I missed. All these corporate goons get in these fights over whose net worth increases from $250MM to $350MM, and it comes on the backs of the sports fans who are seeing their overall bills increase.
Even MLB.TV isn't a real option here (unless you live out-of-market, and then you weren't getting Tigers' games on TV anyway) because of their blackout rules!
But, for those who postulate "maybe the sports bubble is about to break!", there was yesterday's news about how the NBA TV rights are likely to double, with Amazon entering the picture and NBC possibly replacing WBD. The bubble isn't breaking, but rather bills are just going to increase.
OK, rant over.
The bubble isn't breaking, but rather bills are just going to increase.
For how long though? Maybe people will be willing to pay ever-increasing fees for sports programming, but I feel like at some point it's going to outprice the market...
There's still TONS of runway left, IMO. Business-men-and-women don't use the language, they couch it in more bengin terms, but "predatory monetization" is a business strategy that continues and continues to grow. Increasingly back-handed ways of opening a pipeline from your/my/our wallet into theirs.
All the in-game gambling ads and segments. Making your sports teams increasingly difficult to watch, across dozens of different networks such that you lose track of which ones you're even paying for. Video games, the increasing selling of "live service games" versus stand-alone complete games. Mobile video games in particular, the way they target your emotions in an attempt to get you to buy some stuff. All predatory monetization.
Ugh, I'm getting depressed here.
One prominent term in the Xfinity / Bally flap is "downtiering" -- meaning they want to stick Bally Sports on a specialty tier to get more revenue from customers. This probably factors into the overall disagreement somehow.
Yep. What they call "downtiering" --- I call "monetization." A way to get more revenue, while adding minimal incremental value.
I saw a news item yesterday that Dave & Busters is introducing a gambling component to their in-store app. So that they can get a cut (while providing literally NO value) when a couple folk bet a few bucks on a game of Skee-Ball. Good God, I don't begrudge people making $$$, but folks should at least TRY to provide value for that $$$. So many corporations don't even try anymore!
We need NBC to get back the NBA so we can have ROUNDBALL ROCK for their game intros.
bring back PASS
pass
Bring back ON TV.
RIP Dave Strader!
There was a period of time when PASS took away half the Pistons and Red Wings games, and mom wouldn't get cable. When I got to U-M the house lounge TV had PASS, so I could watch more of those games. And also late-night Aussie Rules Football. But I wonder how another Detroit RSN survives in today's market.
Bring back corn cob tv. They say that many nude cadavers can’t possible fall out of caskets! Hey, all we do is film funerals and show what happens
Credit to “I think you should leave”
Baseball on the radio is so much better than TV. All 4 of my kids are baseball and Tiger fans because they grew up with the game on the radio every night during the summer. My 2 older girls both got MLB subscriptions when they moved out of state just so they could continue to listen.
Ernie Harwell was the voice of my childhood. Dan Dickerson is the voice of their childhood.
Earnie harwell and Keith Jackson are the voices in heaven of baseball and football, respectively.
Keith Jackson died?
his broadcasts are just on the live-feed up in heaven, in anticipation of his passing into glory.
And here I am having a hard time figuring out how to run a speaker from the living room out to my deck to listen to Tiger games. I bet they're not using bluetooth technology.
Locally, baseball on the radio is very good, mainly because we have had the fortune of having a stream of very good play-by-play and color people, who are excellent at describing the game. Tune in to other cities' broadcasts and you don't always get the positioning of the fielders, the type of pitch thrown, the pitch's ultimate location, the strategy involved in the pitch choice, pitchers' and batters' weaknesses etc.
If we still had Rizzs and Rathbun in the radio booth in Detroit, radio wouldn't be so much better than TV.
We use DirecTv Stream, which carries the RSNs. I have been really impressed with the service.
This was our move when we dropped actual DirecTV satellite - since the interface was the same, even the channel numbering. Unlimited (okay it's 20) devices, works in multiple states (and out of country with VPN), unlimited cloud DVR, and stable service. If I had to nit pick, the 'auto extend' for live sporting events is problematic but that's easy to work around.
I do believe the DVR does erase after a certain period tho.
I’m in AZ and when Bally couldn’t reach a deal with the teams and stopped carrying the Dbacks games, MLB stepped in and is producing all of the broadcasts on cable. We did not get a rebate, so I assume MLB is getting those funds.
Maybe this will happen in Detroit but it’s a different story so who knows.
In the Diamondbacks case --- Bally literally stopped producing Arizona's games. MLB stepped in because there was no producer.
For the Tigers (and about 10 other teams in this current situation) --- Bally Sports will still be producing their games, like the Cardinals game this AM. It's just that it won't be distributed by Comcast.
I don't think there's much for MLB to do here. Unfortunately. Waiving the MLB.tv blackout rules is a non-starter. It's something Manfred actually wants to do, but it's definitely against the current legal agreements and the networks/TV folk would go crazy the second they even considered it.
I agree that they wont do anything but the blackout restrictions are insane. I have mlb.tv because I live out of market. The blackouts for me are KC, St. Louis, Texas, and Houston. I'm a 4.5 hour drive to St. Louis and the other three are over 6 hours away. Arkansas does not have a baseball team and none of those teams lie within the state. I understand St. Louis being the blacked out team but blacking out 4 teams is ridiculous.
cant wait till Amazon Prime starts streaming detroit sports. Hopefully it will be included in the current subscription cost but probably not.
Yeah, let’s see the price tag on that first…
I watch the Tigers on Amazon Prime in North Carolina. It's $30 per month. I picked up the package to watch Opening Day but may keep it for the summer. I'm not sure if it's available in all parts of the country....or how that would be monitored.
ouch, that's steep. but at least it will be more accessible than the Ballys app
I don’t get Bally on YouTube TV either, Tigers game viewership must be abysmal.
Yeah, it was a bummer when FSD dropped off YTV, but I got used to it. Turns out that life goes on without the Tigers, Pistons and Red Wings.
Now if the networks would just move more college football and basketball to the Cock and its equivalents that I refuse to pay for I'll finally be free from paying for TV.