Congratulations, sports fans!  It is a wonderful time to consider leaving your cable television provider AND the rising cost of internet-based streaming services to watch sports.

What?

That’s right!  Those who live within 40 to 50 miles of traditional over-the-air local television network affiliates are quietly being lured to “Come back home!”

Last week, Google-owned YouTubeTV and Disney’s assortment of sports outlets (ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, SEC Network, etc.) got into the latest tiff where paying customers at home were cut-off from television stations they pay to receive.

Nearly ten million YouTubeTV customers learned that their usual assortment of Saturday college football games had vanished due to this spat between corporate giants.

Before we delve into those details, here is a partial solution which sports television consumers might wish to consider ASAP

For a one-time $20-$40 investment at your local big box retailer, you can plug in a small antenna into the back of your television.  That’s my little $25 antenna shown in the feature picture for this post.

An antenna like mine may be all you need to watch all or some of these exceptional college football games on television Saturday, November 8 – for free:

ABC (all kick-off times are CST):

11AM – 8-0 BYU at 8-1 Texas Tech

2:30 PM – 8-0 Texas A&M at 6-2 Missouri

6:30 PM – 5-3 LSU at 7-1 Alabama

FOX:

11AM – 9-0 Indiana at 3-5 Penn State

2:30 PM – 5-4 Iowa State at 6-2 TCU

8:00 PM – 6-3 Nebraska at 3-5 UCLA

CBS:

2:30 PM – 7-1 Oregon at 6-2 Iowa

NBC:

6:30 PM – 7-1 Navy at 6-2 Notre Dame

Sure, you are going to miss most of the ACC football games (ESPN) and several other top college football games this week.

Can you survive with a single (but quality) college football game on your television beginning Saturday at 11AM (CST) through the late evening hours every week – all at no charge?

The NFL has always been seen via over-the-air television every Sunday!

The very smart and wealthy folks who run the NFL have wisely spread their product across a large array of television platforms.  The league’s TV partners are willing to shell-out billions to carry the NFL’s weekly football games.

FOX primarily covers the NFC’s early and late Sunday afternoon slate of games.  CBS is the primary outlet for AFC games during Sunday’s early and late time slots.

NBC’s Sunday Night Football finishes the day with one more free over-the-air game – usually involving a couple of top NFL teams.

You don’t even need YouTubeTV, ESPN or your local cable television company to watch NFL games on Sunday!

Only ESPN’s Monday Night Football and Amazon Prime’s Thursday Night games require your monetary investment in cable television or a streaming service to watch their weekly NFL offerings.

Did I mention NBA basketball is now available via both NBC and ABC – for free!

After more than two decades on cable television’s TNT, the NBA just returned to over-the-air “free” television on NBC beginning last month.

The network will televise one game every Tuesday night and another on Sunday night on its local over-the-air NBC affiliates for the entire regular season.

Meanwhile, ABC will carry a Saturday evening “prime time” NBA game once again this season (beginning in late January).  They will also show several Sunday afternoon NBA games on your local over-the-air affiliate during the season, too.

The lengthy NBA playoffs (April through late June) will primarily be shown by the pirates of cable TV and paid streaming services.  However, June’s NBA Finals will be carried by your “free” local ABC affiliate.

What are YouTubeTV and Di$ney fighting about (as if we didn’t already know)?

On Thursday October 30, YouTubeTV (which has nearly ten million subscribers paying more than $80 per month) posted a short note on Twitter (X.com):

“Members, when we renew our contracts with network partners, we advocate for fair pricing to offer you the best TV experience.  Our contract with Disney has reached its renewal date, and we’ll not agree to terms that disadvantage our members while benefiting Disney’s TV products.”

Last weekend’s November 1 slate of college football games on ABC and the ESPN family of networks vanished for YouTubeTV subscribers.  More than 20 channels owned by Disney disappeared from YouTubeTV as this latest “war” began.

YouTubeTV is now dangling a possible $20 credit (it’s OK to laugh here) to customers if the outage continues for several weeks.

If there was only a practical solution…? (Didn’t we already cover that?)

Meanwhile, the geniuses at Disney launched their own counter-offensive at YouTubeTV.

“Google’s YouTubeTV has chosen to deny their subscribers the content they value most by refusing to pay fair rates for our channels, including ESPN and ABC.  YouTubeTV and its owner, Google, are not interested in achieving a fair deal with us.  Instead, they want to use their power and extraordinary resources to eliminate competition and devalue the very content that helped them build their service.”

These two gigantic multi-billion dollar conglomerates want their customers to believe that they (YouTubeTV and Disney) are actually looking out for the little guys.  R-i-g-h-t!

Is Disney trying to drive YouTubeTV customers to subscribe to its $30/month ESPN App?

That’s a tricky question.

ESPN has gobbled-up much of the most prestigious major sports events (college football/basketball/baseball, NFL, NBA, NHL, and many others).  They have paid billions for the right to succeed or fail in that effort.

ESPN (Disney) depends on being able to extract what is called a “carriage fee” from cable television and streaming operators for the right to carry their high-demand line-up.  Disney realizes that sports television consumers want ESPN as their primary channel at most cable TV and online TV steaming services.

ESPN’s “take-it-or-leave-it” carriage fee is (generally) about $20 per customer – per month!

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