So CES is happening in Vegas this week (it kicked off yesterday, the 5th, with press day, and the show floor opens today) and I've been half-watching the liveblogs while I should be doing actual work. Most of it is the usual parade of curved TVs and fitness bands that'll be in a landfill by 2017. But one announcement from Tuesday actually made me sit up: Dish Network is launching something called Sling TV, and it's going to sell you live ESPN over the internet for twenty bucks a month. No cable box. No two-year contract. No bundle of forty channels you never watch just to get the one you do.
I want to be clear about why this is a bigger deal than it sounds. ESPN has never, not once, been available outside a pay-TV subscription. Disney (who owns ESPN) has fought this for years because the affiliate fees cable and satellite companies pay them are enormous, something like six or seven dollars a subscriber a month whether you watch a single minute of SportsCenter or not. That's the whole reason your cable bill is what it is. So the fact that Dish got them to agree to a standalone internet package, even a limited one, feels like someone found a crack in a dam that's been holding for a decade.
The lineup they're talking about is ESPN and ESPN2 as the headliners, plus TNT, TBS, Food Network, HGTV, Travel Channel, Disney Channel, ABC Family, CNN, and Cartoon Network/Adult Swim. That's it for twenty dollars. No local channels, no NBC or CBS live, and from what I've read you'll need an antenna or something else for that. Still. I've been paying Comcast $94 a month for two years now for a bundle that includes, as far as I can tell, three channels I actually watch and about ninety I've never once clicked past on my way to something else.
I'll admit I'm the target audience here in an annoying, self-aware way. I already have a Roku 3 hooked up in the living room, I've got Netflix, I use an antenna in the bedroom for local news because I'm too lazy to run a second cable line, and I've been telling anyone who'll listen for two years that I'm "about to cut the cord." I haven't done it, because my wife watches live sports and refuses to deal with any setup that requires more than one remote. Sling TV might actually be the thing that gets us there, assuming it's not a buggy mess when it actually ships (they haven't given a firm date yet, just "coming this year").
My one real complaint, before I get too excited: twenty dollars for basically nine channels isn't actually cheap in a vacuum. Do the math against what you're already paying for Netflix and Hulu Plus and this starts adding up to not much less than what a lot of people pay now, especially once you throw in whatever you're paying for internet service on its own, which cable companies love to jack up the second you drop the TV part of the bundle. I've heard from a couple people that Comcast does exactly this, raises your internet rate almost to cancel out the savings. So I wouldn't call this some magic fix. It's just the first real crack, and the fact that ESPN agreed to it at all says something about which way the wind is blowing.
There was other stuff at CES yesterday too. GM's Mary Barra did a keynote and showed off a Chevy Bolt concept, which is apparently supposed to be an electric car with real range (they're saying 200 miles) at a price under $30,000, which if it's real and not vaporware would actually matter more to more people than any TV announcement. I don't know enough about cars to have a strong opinion there, other than: I'll believe the price when I see a sticker on a lot.
Anyway. I'm going to keep watching the CES coverage roll in over the next couple days, mostly out of habit at this point, nine Januarys running now. Most years it's noise. This year the noise had at least one thing in it worth paying attention to.