The Pay Television Guy

Served a 13-year sentence at your Cable TV company. Now educating consumers and speculating on the future of legacy cable and streaming pay-TV services. 📺🛜

[The Pay Television Guy @PayTelevision]

When I lived in Chicago, we’d call days like today a Tom Skilling Chicagoland Special

[The Pay Television Guy @PayTelevision]

@DanielNMiller @politico “Only Ellison and Weiss are allowed to poison entities, such as CBS News.”

- Paramount Attorneys, probably

[The Pay Television Guy @PayTelevision]

@GumryWX This happened to Wilmington, Ohio during severe weather on Saturday. It’s becoming a common occurrence with WFO’s.

[The Pay Television Guy @PayTelevision]

I saw a Skyline Chili tent selling food at the local festival today, and they were selling bottled Mountain Dew.

I made a joke at their booth, but the employees working it didn’t get it.

[The Pay Television Guy @PayTelevision]

Communications are down/degraded at the local office to a level where functionality is impacted, so the office in Kentucky is temporarily covering the local area.

A similar issue occurred during a severe thunderstorm event earlier in 2026, and I assume it’s the same thing again. The root issue might be whoever ILN is being forced to use as their data provider, and if so they’re at the mercy of how fast that company is at restoring the network comms.

Bottom line… It means public-facing items, such as radar from KILN, KCMH, KCVG, and KDAY are unavailable, with the next closest radar coverage available (for public viewing) being… very, very far away.

Also those with NOAA Weather Radio may not receive alerts, but third-party weather app push alerts may still work to receive alerts.

[The Pay Television Guy @PayTelevision]

@NWSILN Is everything down again? All four radar sites and NWR are down. Centurylink again?

[The Pay Television Guy @PayTelevision]

@Gaige_returns The way Indiana is going, someday… Lawrenceburg, Indiana Bengals

[The Pay Television Guy @PayTelevision]

@jonathanmaze So, not high-paying jobs… possibly people taking on second jobs to survive?

Curious.

[The Pay Television Guy @PayTelevision]

Noticed Spectrum is no longer providing FanDuel Sports Network on many of their cable systems.

DirecTV is still providing feeds, even though there isn’t anything worth watching on them.

Would be nice if DirecTV dropped all of those feeds, and reconfigured/cleaned up the channels throughout the 600’s

[The Pay Television Guy @PayTelevision]

@TRAVELSnCHASES @NBCNews @JaniceHuff4ny “Scary colors vs. the other stations = ratings for the next newscast.”

- Program director, probably

[The Pay Television Guy @PayTelevision]

@masha_slp When I went to The Venetian and Palazzo, they would write the number down on the small card/map booklet they hand to you with the keys.

This is the way.

[The Pay Television Guy @PayTelevision]

@RaymonScannell @NormOrnstein My
Source

News <— The ‘progrum’ would be here
Opinion
World

Most of their daily schedule is under the opinion category. Something like this would help balance the issue they, and the other 4 cable outlets all have, which is too much opinion/arguing “heads in a box” programming

[The Pay Television Guy @PayTelevision]

@unusual_whales …and the font size will probably be 6pt and opaque level will be set to 1%

[The Pay Television Guy @PayTelevision]

It’s because ABC has sold the local rights to their programming to an affiliate ownership group, who is trying to get DirecTV to increase customer costs…

However, since the local affiliate doesn’t control the ESPN app itself, that’s why you can still get access via bypassing the local affiliate and going straight to ESPN.

Your local market happens to have a middleman who is holding the local ABC feed hostage and demanding increased compensation for access to the local feed.

The local affiliate ownership group thought it would be clever to make the date of the previous contract right before The NBA Finals and Stanley Cup Final, in hopes that DirecTV would cave in and force their customers to pay a ridiculous rate increase to keep those stations uninterrupted (it’s a common tactic).

DirecTV balked, and is allowing the local affiliate to remove the local signals from their lineup. Eventually, the longer this goes your local affiliate will start to feel the heat from local advertisers who are paying high rates for those local ad inserts, but are missing a large percentage of the available viewers due to the blackout.

What isn’t talked about enough is that your local ABC affiliate ownership group is taking a big hit on local advertising, as those local ads are not being seen during some of the highest-rated programming of the entire year. Eventually, those local advertisers are going to demand “make goods” where the local ABC affiliate is going to have to give them additional advertising slots in the future to make up for the lost viewership during the blackout.

It’s a game, and the viewer is the one who is inconvenienced the most.

Using the ESPN app and authenticating your pay-television subscription is the workaround at this time.

[The Pay Television Guy @PayTelevision]

DirecTV is actually not making much of the selling of pay-television.

Yes, they collect billions of dollars in subscription revenue, with very little of that actually staying inside their company.

About 97% of that collection is simply being passed to the programmers, such as The Walt Disney Company and the local affiliate ownership groups who control the various network affiliations.

Most of the major DirecTV subscription plans include access to authenticate the ESPN Unlimited app, which is the primary workaround to still receive the game. There are a small number of plans which do not include access to ESPN Unlimited via the ESPN app.

A low-cost over the air broadcast antenna can also receive local ABC stations in 85% of the country, providing access to receive the game.

[The Pay Television Guy @PayTelevision]

@TravisHines21 But, you can’t authenticate the ESPN Unlimited service yet because YouTube TV has been dragging their feet on getting the option to their subscribers.

YouTubeTV needs to hurry up and get their customers ESPN Unlimited authenticated access.

[The Pay Television Guy @PayTelevision]

It’s not being provided in 4K by ESPN/Disney for… reasons… and all but a few ABC affiliates are in 720p resolution.

Your best bet is to authenticate your pay television subscription through the ESPN Unlimited app, and get the feed that way.

YouTube TV can only provide what is sent to them by the affiliates who control the output of the affiliate signals.

[The Pay Television Guy @PayTelevision]

@jaredsmithbets DirecTV subscription likely includes authenticated access to the ESPN Unlimited app.

Most DirecTV packages, except for commercial accounts and a very small number of old residential packages, include access to the ESPN Unlimited tier within the ESPN app.

That’s the workaround.

[The Pay Television Guy @PayTelevision]

@Dex0us Because ABC decided sports look better in 720p instead of 1080i, and they refuse to produce The Finals in 1080p for the ESPN4K channel.

They want to keep ABC affiliates happy, and force you to watch the local ad inserts, which wouldn’t happen if they provided the game on ESPN 4K

[The Pay Television Guy @PayTelevision]

@PHXDDYBear @DylanByers @CBSNews @bariweiss Well, not anymore. Obviously.