Hey there! I’m Jared Newman, and this is Cord Cutter Weekly, my newsletter on how to save money on TV and make the most of streaming.

Did someone share this newsletter with you? Sign up to get it in your own inbox.

This week on PCWorld: Sports streamers know they’re overpriced

Jared Newman   |   February 28, 2025

It’s taken a couple years, but regional sports networks are starting to realize they charge too much to stream local games.

NESN 360, which offers live streams of the Boston Red Sox and Bruins, just dropped its annual price from $330 to $240, while also throwing in four Red Sox tickets. Main Street Sports Group, which operates regional FanDuel Sports Network channels, has hinted at lower prices as well, and in some markets, local games stream for free or are available over-the-air with an antenna.

What you’re witnessing are the first tweaks to a misguided sports streaming strategy, one that assumes high direct-to-consumer prices will discourage cord-cutting while offsetting the revenue losses from the decline of cable TV. That strategy hasn’t been working for regional sports networks, and it’s not going to work for the likes of ESPN and Fox, which plan to launch their own expensive streaming services later this year.

Read the full column on PCWorld →

Weekly rewind

DirecTV’s new bundles: After launching a sports-centric pay TV package last month, DirecTV is adding a few more skinny bundles:

  • MyEntertainment ($35 per month) offers a broad mix of entertainment and cable news channels, but no major broadcast or sports stations. It also includes Disney+ and Hulu (with ads), and Max (with ads) will be added soon. It could pair well with an antenna if you’re not big into sports.
  • MyNews ($40 per month) has the major cable news networks, business news channels, and local Fox and NBC.
  • MiEspañol ($35 per month) has Univision, Telemundo, and and array of other Spanish-language channels.

Here’s a page where you can see all the channels in each bundle and build your own package.

As before, MySports ($70 per month) includes major broadcast channels (minus CBS), national sports channels such as ESPN, and access to ESPN+. A new $13 per month MySports Extra add-on brings NFL Redzone and a handful of other channels.

At some point, it just makes sense to get a bigger pay TV package such as YouTube TV or Hulu + Live TV, but there are some opportunities to save here if you’re willing to trim some things out.

Broadcasters push to kill ATSC 1.0: If broadcasters get their way, you won’t be able to watch free local TV from an antenna in a few years without buying upgraded hardware. The National Association of Broadcasters is petitioning the FCC to require an end to ATSC 1.0 broadcasts in the 55 largest U.S. markets by 2028, and in all markets by 2030. The group is eager to move onto ATSC 3.0, a newer standard that supports extra features such as 4K HDR video and on-demand content (along with targeted advertising), and now it wants to make the transition mandatory.

There’s just one problem: As Matthew Keys reports, only 10% of TVs that shipped in the United States last year support ATSC 3.0, and the vast majority of TVs in use today are incompatible with the new standard. Converter boxes remain expensive at $90 and up, and ATSC 3.0’s copy protection limits what you can do with over-the-air DVR, which has made the new standard toxic among tech enthusiasts.

Adoption should have been happening naturally by now, but broadcasters have failed to build enthusiasm among consumers and TV makers. Even if the FCC were to start requiring ATSC 3.0 tuners in new TVs, there’s not nearly enough time to achieve wide adoption in the next few years. Forcing the matter through an FCC mandate will only wind up shutting millions of people out of free over-the-air TV.

Max’s sports and CNN shake-up: Starting March 30, Max’s $10 per month ad-supported plan will no longer include live sports from Warner’s cable channels (TNT, TBS, TruTV) or news from CNN. For that content, you’ll need an ad-free Max plan at $17 per month.

While it’s bad news for ad-supported subscribers—and a curious move, given streamers’ eagerness to build up their ad businesses—keep in mind that Warner initially planned to charge $10 per month extra for sports on Max across all plans. It never got around to doing so, and now subscribers can rest easy knowing there won’t be an upcharge when March Madness rolls around.

More catch-up

Save more money

This section of the newsletter has affiliate links, earning me a commission if you buy or subscribe to something in some cases.

If you’re a T-Mobile or Metro customer, mark your calendar for March 25, which is when you’ll be able to redeem a free season of MLB.TV. It’ll be available through the T-Life app, but only if you claim it by March 31. (I’ve also set my own calendar reminder to mention this again in the March 28 edition of Cord Cutter Weekly.)

Other notable deals:

  • Get a refurbished third-gen Apple TV 4K, my favorite streaming box, for $95. (Only seven in stock as of this writing.)
  • Second-gen Apple TV 4K models are also on sale for $120. Only get this if you need the ethernet port.
  • You can still get a month of Paramount+ using this link or this link. New or returning subscribers only, can’t be added to an active subscription.
  • You can still get three free months of Peacock via this link, or with no ads for $6 per month by adding promo code PEAGZ7LNYFN44OEJ6.
  • AMC+ is doing 30 days free with promo code AMC30FT.

As always, my full list of streaming deals is updated every Friday on the Cord Cutter Weekly website.

Thanks for reading!

Got cord cutting questions for me? Just reply to this email to get in touch.

Until next week,
Jared

If someone shared Cord Cutter Weekly with you, consider signing up to get it in your own inbox.