With Google and AT&T each preparing to launch their own robust subscription-based Internet TV services in the next few months, the days of sacrificing live sports or your favorite network channels to join the cord-cutting movement are nearly behind us.

Google, in particular, will usher in a watershed movement for over-the-top (OTT) providers, a fast-growing category that includes Netflix, Hulu and Sling TV. The company has reportedly signed an all-important licensing deal with CBS that includes sports for a new web TV service called, “Unplugged.”

It’s kind of a big deal. Similar Internet video endeavors have historically been locked out of must-see-live-TV — think: sports — because content companies and broadcasters have so far deemed that content too valuable to share.

No longer.


“More than anything, this is yet another sign of the trend of live TV in OTT,” said Ren Bond, a research analyst who studies the online video industry at Parks Associates. “Google getting content from CBS is so significant because the agreement with CBS includes NFL games, and that’s something that earlier trailblazers had a hard time getting at first.”

Similarly, AT&T’s coming-this-year DirecTV Now service is meant to replicate the channel lineup offered by DirecTV, just offered over the Internet as opposed to through a dish or box. The communications company has signed on NBC Universal, Disney and Viacom, but has not yet secured CBS and Fox, according to Variety.

Even Sling TV and PlayStation Vue, thus far cord-cordcutters go-to services for live shows, are getting better licensing deals that include rights to some local affiliates and never-streamed-before live sporting events. Sling, for instance, just grabbed NHL Network. And Vue, which no longer requires a PlayStation, has plans that come with CBS, NBC and Fox Sports, though game blackouts are not atypical.

The question is, why have broadcasters suddenly, practically overnight, become more generous in the online licensing of their most-prized content?


My theory is that they need us, the viewers, more than we need them, particularly as the on-demand providers such as Netflix and Amazon spit out bigger and bigger original hits. We no longer play by their rules, so to speak, as evidenced in the much-discussed decline in the NFL’s TV ratings this season. During the first few weeks of the season, network viewership was down 10 percent, according to Nielsen data.

Whereas before broadcasters were reluctant to risk long-standing relationships with cable and satellite providers for something that was unproven, now they’ve come to recognize that they need to put their content online in order to appeal to larger audiences, Bond said.

“Sling TV and PlayStation Vue have established that these services are here to stay,” she said.

If there’s a downside, it’s that the onslaught of new-and-improved online video services are essentially bringing back the bloated cable bundle, which many of us cord-cutters and cord-nevers have learned to happily live without.


In fact, cord-nevers, as in the younger kids who have never paid for cable, are disinterested in traditional pay TV, Bond said. And they are absolutely not channel flippers. Instead, they prefer video on demand.

But many experts, Bond included, believe that live TV still matters to them for special occasions — think awards shows, debates and sports. Hence the very existence of Sling, Vue, and soon Google’s Unplugged and AT&T’s DirecTV Now.

While there’s seemingly something for everyone in the content department, the very unlike-cable experience that some of us crave (a part from no contracts) doesn’t appear to be included.

jennifer.vangrove@sduniontribune.com (619) 293-1840 Twitter: @jbruin