Comcast has introduced a streaming TV service for $15 a month.
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The new Flex Pack skinny bundle allows customers to pick and choose packages, so you can customize that channel lineup.
Customers can add and remove as many channel packs as they’d like on a monthly basis. Most notably, the Flex Pack does not include ESPN. Instead, customers can add those via individual themed add-on packs, which cost $4-$10 extra per month. That could be the ESPN-inclusive National Action pack, a package of local channels or one of kids’ programming, for instance.
It’s not clear if Dish has cleared Flex Pack with programming partners.
“It’s really an attempt to give consumers a little more choice”, said Warren Schlichting, Dish’s executive vice president of marketing, programming and media sales. Of course, a lot of the ones complaining just hate having to pay for channels they never actually watch. Our sort of internal mantra here has been, ‘Don’t watch. The Kids Pack is an option with the Disney Channel, Disney Jr., Animal Planet, Nick Jr., Disney XD, Nicktoons, Boomerang, and Baby TV, all for $10 a month.
Essential add-ons include the “Locals Pack”, which goes for $10 a month and includes local feeds of the Big Four Broadcast networks and Univision. The complete channel list is now available on Dish’s website.
DISH’s Flex Pack will offer a core channel line-up of 50 channels which will include AMC, TNT, USA, HGTV, E!, Cartoon Network, History, A&E, CNN, Discovery, TBS, Food Network, FX and TV Land, among others.
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Helping to cut down the cost is the separation of sports channels. As a result ESPN sued Verizon, arguing it violated the terms of the sports giant’s distribution agreement by excluding its nets from the core package, while Disney, Fox Sports and NBCUniversal also complained about Verizon’s Custom TV. Dish’s average revenue per user came in at about in the second quarter of 2016. “(With) Sling we started to see that we had found a rich vein of demand and so we are trying to take some of those learnings and bring those back to traditional television”.
