It’s a question worth asking, because most people don’t fully realize how much has changed in just the last few years in how we watch our favorite programming. The chickens have come home to roost — much as I predicted in my book over seven years ago. And honestly, it’s turned out a little worse than even I expected.
From my view, the changes came gradually enough that many people didn’t notice what was happening until they looked at what they were spending each month and did the math. The original reason for cutting the cord was to save money. Somewhere along the way, that goal quietly slipped away.
It didn’t take long for the providers to recognize the hit to their bottom line when cord-cutting took off. What took time was the process of reclaiming control — pulling back the programming rights they had previously handed to cable and satellite re-providers so they could deliver it directly from their own platforms and recapture that revenue stream themselves. Early in the cord-cutting era, it was relatively easy to find popular older shows and movies scattered across the web through channels that built their audience on that kind of content. Those days are mostly gone now. There’s still plenty of older programming out there, but the selection is becoming less current and less compelling over time.
If you’ve been a cord-cutter since the early days, you remember how it worked. You put up an antenna, watched whatever came in free over the air from your local CBS, NBC, ABC, FOX, CW, and PBS affiliates, and if you wanted something beyond that, you might add Netflix or one of the early movie services. For a while it was genuinely lean and affordable, and many people were happy with it.
Then FOX launched Fox Sports 1, and that was really the first domino. The other networks followed with their own sports channels, tucked into separate tiers that cost extra. If you wanted to keep watching your favorite teams, you had to pay. From there it cascaded — sports channels gave way to full network apps, and now it isn’t just sports but a wide range of programming that lives behind a monthly or yearly fee. The vicious circle has fully closed its loop. The providers have recaptured their revenue, just through a different pipeline than before.
The key difference between what sports bars are experiencing and what you’re experiencing at home is the pace. For sports bars, the disruption has been abrupt and immediate — their business model depends on delivering any game, on any screen, at any moment, and the fragmentation of streaming rights has made that exponentially more complicated and expensive almost overnight. For the average home viewer, the same changes have been rolled out gradually and consistently, easing in one app at a time, one fee at a time, until one day you add it all up and wonder how you got here.
But make no mistake — you’re heading to the same place. The sports bar owner facing rising costs, complicated licensing, and frustrated customers is simply a few steps ahead of where the rest of us are going. More apps, more costs, more frustration as the technology keeps shifting underneath us. The cord-cutter’s monthly bill is already beginning to look a lot like the cable bill they were trying to escape in the first place.
So I’ll close with the same question I opened with: have we reached the breaking point? Or will viewers collectively decide to draw the line — stop adding services, stop absorbing the increases, and force the providers to find a way to deliver what we want, when we want it, at a price that actually makes sense?
I don’t have that answer yet. But I have a feeling we’re going to find out sooner than anyone expects.
Hey, this is Russ, and that’s the Norman TV View… See ya next time…
All views expressed are strictly the opinion of the writer
If you’ve walked into a sports bar lately and noticed something feels a little different, you’re not imagining it. The big screens are still there. The wings and cold drinks are still there. But something underneath the surface of that whole experience is shifting in a way most casual fans never think about — and it’s putting a lot of those establishments in a very uncomfortable position.
To understand why, you have to understand how a sports bar actually works from the inside.
A sports bar’s entire business model is built around one simple promise: come here and you can watch the game. Any game. All the games. That promise depends on having access to every major sports broadcast under one roof, delivered reliably, on multiple screens simultaneously. For decades, that was manageable. You signed up with a commercial cable or satellite provider, paid the commercial licensing rate — which, by the way, is significantly higher than what you pay at home — and you had what you needed. It wasn’t cheap, but it was predictable. You knew what you were getting, you knew what you were paying, and you could build a business around it.
That predictable world is getting complicated in a hurry, and the complications are coming from every direction at once.
The same fragmentation that’s been frustrating you at home (where you need multiple apps just to follow your favorite sports) is hitting sports bars at a scale that’s genuinely hard to manage. When a major league or network decides to move its games exclusively to a streaming platform, a sports bar can’t just pull out a tablet and log into an app the way you might at home. Commercial streaming rights are an entirely different animal from residential ones. Licensing agreements, simultaneous stream limits, screen count restrictions – these are real barriers that don’t have simple solutions yet, and the industry is frankly still making up the rules as it goes.
Think about what it actually takes to run a sports bar on any given weekend. You might have football on several screens, a baseball game on a couple more, maybe NASCAR or golf somewhere in the corner for those fans nursing a drink and keeping one eye on the leaderboard. Under the old delivery system, all of that came through one provider, one bill, one set of equipment. Now imagine trying to assemble that same lineup from four or five different streaming services, each with their own app, their own login, their own technical requirements, and their own ideas about how many screens you can use at the same time. The logistics alone would give you a headache, and that’s before you get to the cost.
I’ve seen this kind of disruption before. In my thirty-plus years in the TV business, I watched the delivery system change more than once, and the pattern is always the same. Providers restructure to protect their revenue, and the businesses built around the old delivery system scramble to adapt or get left behind. What’s different this time is the speed. The shift to streaming is happening faster than the commercial infrastructure is ready to handle, and sports bars are caught right in the gap between where the industry was and where it’s trying to go.
Recently, not once but twice within a couple of weeks of each other, I became aware of situations that illustrate this perfectly. One was actually an inquiry for a new sports bar in an existing residential association open to the public. One wasn’t even a sports bar in the traditional sense, which actually makes the point even stronger.
The first was a normal inquiry into providing programming to multiple TVs (a minimum total of 24 to be exact). They wanted to have information about having the service delivered via satellite or possibly streaming. Streaming was actually what they preferred because of possible interruptions due to weather conditions. Both are viable, and each has its own set of possible problems. They didn’t want to have a game interrupted because of rain fade at an important conclusion to a play or some other situation in the game. In their situation, satellite was the better possible option simply because there are no limitations on the number of TVs. The number of possible viewers in the establishment and the desired content are how pricing is set, as a general rule.
Streaming in that situation is a whole other ball game altogether. There are presently limitations to the number of TVs able to have individual program choices, as well as one other important thing that has to be considered. That important thing is the amount of bandwidth available for streaming to that number of TVs. Since most everything these days is in high definition, more bandwidth is required to avoid buffering or total dropout of the programs. I don’t know the full reasoning for the limit to the number of TVs, but my suspicion is it has to do with bandwidth. There are a number of technical reasons which I won’t go into here, but the bandwidth requirements could be a deal killer for the establishment. It could mean needing more than one T-1 line, which is a major financial investment.
The second situation was different in scale but identical in frustration.
It is a private community clubhouse with nine televisions, situated next to their community pool and a small Tiki bar that also served the clubhouse. They had previously received their programming through a bulk satellite package of around 120 channels that included sports packages, provided through the association’s private cable system. The system served about 320 residents plus the clubhouse needs. It worked well. Members could gather around the pool or in the clubhouse and watch multiple games across multiple screens without any real complications. Then they changed their entire delivery system, and the bulk package that had made everything simple suddenly wasn’t available anymore. What had been a straightforward bulk residential-style arrangement now required transitioning to a commercial streaming provision, similar to what a sports bar deals with, just at a smaller scale and for a private audience rather than a paying public one. Multiple game choices, multiple screens, licensing considerations that didn’t exist before — all of it landed on the association’s plate at once. And this is a clubhouse, not a business built around sports viewing. Imagine the same thing hitting an actual sports bar that depends on that experience to keep the lights on.
The financial pressure on those businesses is significant and getting more so. A sports bar operator already paying premium commercial rates for cable or satellite now faces the prospect of layering multiple streaming agreements on top of that — each with their own pricing structure, their own contract terms, and their own technical demands. For a large chain with resources and a legal team, that’s manageable if not ideal. For a small independently owned neighborhood bar or restaurant, that math gets very difficult, very fast. Some will adapt. Others won’t survive the transition.
What makes this particularly frustrating is that none of it is happening because someone sat down and decided to make life harder for sports bars or community clubhouses. It’s happening because every provider in the chain is making the decision that’s best for their own bottom line, without much consideration for what it does to the businesses and people downstream. Sound familiar? It should — because it’s the same dynamic I’ve been describing across this entire series.
And here’s what should get your attention even if you’ve never set foot in a sports bar or attended a clubhouse event in your life: what these places are dealing with today is a preview of what the rest of us are heading toward in our own living rooms. The same forces driving up their costs and multiplying their complications are already working on your personal setup — just at a smaller scale and a slightly slower pace. The sports bar feels it first and feels it hardest because the stakes are higher. But the direction of travel is the same for all of us.
The sports bar is the canary in the coal mine. And that canary is starting to look very uncomfortable.
Next time, I’ll bring this a little closer to home — because what’s happening to them is already beginning to happen to you, if it hasn’t already.
Hey, this is Russ, and that’s the Norman TV View… See ya next time…
All views expressed are strictly the opinion of the writer
If you read my last article here on the Norman TV View, you already know where this is headed. Cord-cutting, which started as a way to escape the rising costs of cable and satellite, has come full circle. Instead of liberation from the cord, we’ve simply rebooted it. The cord is still there — it’s just delivering our programming through the internet now instead of a coaxial cable in the wall. Same destination, different road.
So why did we cut the cord to begin with? That’s a great question, and honestly, one I’ve been asking myself more and more lately.
The original reason was simple: reduce the cost of watching our favorite programming. We bought antennas, streaming boxes, and plug-in devices to receive what we wanted without paying a cable or satellite bill. And there were some genuinely good things that came out of the transition to digital broadcasting. Picture quality improved significantly.
Reception got better over time as the old analog channels disappeared and people figured out the right antennas for their situations.
Speaking of antennas — allow me to get a little technical for just a moment. Feel free to skip the next paragraph if that’s not your thing.
Digital reception was a finicky beast after the transition, and here’s the simple reason why. With the old analog signals, you might remember something called “ghosting” — that double or blurry image on your screen caused by what engineers call multi-path interference. Annoying, but you could still watch. With digital signals, that same interference doesn’t give you a blurry picture — it kills the signal entirely. The digital data streams fall out of sync, and the processor simply can’t sort it out. That’s an oversimplification, but it matters if you use or plan to use an antenna. I covered this in my 2019 book, and after years of living with digital signals, I’ve learned even more. It’s a topic I’ll likely revisit here in a future article.
On the positive side, the number of digital channels available in my area has more than doubled in the last seven years, making antenna use more appealing than ever for cord-cutters. The catch is that antenna alone won’t get you everything you want to watch — and that’s exactly where the apps come in.
And that brings us to the heart of this article.
We are getting weary. As a whole, cord-cutters are exhausted by the maze of apps, subscriptions, and monthly fees required just to watch what we want, when we want to watch it. Streaming fatigue is real, and it’s settling in fast. The biggest driver, from where I sit, is cost. There are more apps than ever, most of them carrying a monthly or yearly fee, and the total keeps climbing. I mentioned in my last article that I’m personally paying about $20 more per month now than I did with cable — and getting less programming for it. I don’t think I’m alone in that.
With everything going on in the world today and prices rising across the board — gas, groceries, you name it — paying an ever-growing stack of app fees is getting harder to justify. People are starting to ask whether it’s worth it, and some are seriously considering going back to cable or satellite. Others are just cutting things off entirely.
In my opinion, the blame falls squarely on programming providers who needed to replace the income they lost when cord-cutting took off. Originally, they had a reliable revenue stream through cable and satellite re-providers. When people started leaving, that stream dried up. So they found another way to get it back — first by adding sports channels in separate tiers, then by launching their own apps, and, more recently, by pulling their original programming from other platforms to make their own apps more desirable. Every move is designed to bring the money back.
Now, I’ll soften that a little. “Force” is probably too strong a word for what they did. They simply gave viewers a choice: pay the fee and keep watching, or don’t. Reasonable enough on the surface. The problem is that those “minimal costs” have multiplied across so many providers that the total stopped being minimal a long time ago. The number of apps has at least doubled, and they’ve effectively become the new cable companies — just smaller, more numerous, and without the one-bill convenience.
Where does it go from here? In my opinion, cable and satellite providers aren’t going away — but they will continue adapting. DirecTV is already streaming its programming while still maintaining satellite service, and I believe their long-term plan is to phase satellite out entirely. Streaming will continue to grow in importance across the board. And costs will keep rising until providers either price themselves out of the market or viewers simply decide enough is enough and walk away.
That last scenario — what happens when viewers reach their breaking point — is worth its own conversation, and one I plan to have here soon.
But that’s just the Norman TV View. Time will tell if I’m right…
Hey, this is Russ, and that’s the Norman TV View… See ya next time…
A lot has changed in the seven years since I wrote my book, “So…You Just Want To Watch Television?” back in 2019. There’s a big difference between cord-cutting then and cord-cutting now — and if you’re like me, you may have noticed you’re not actually saving the money you thought you’d save.
I’m willing to bet many of you never actually cut the “cord” in the original sense. Instead, you changed how the cord serves up its offerings. Maybe you kept your cable or satellite service for a while as you explored antenna and internet-delivered options, and along the way discovered things you weren’t familiar with that captured your attention and stuck around alongside what you already had.
The original idea behind cord-cutting was simple: drop the “pay for” services, switch to off-air antenna reception, and use your existing internet service to pick up the rest — for free, or close to it. Some people did exactly that. Others never fully completed the switch.
That brings up something that aggravated me even back then, especially if you’re a sports fan. Sports is where I remember the changes starting. I’m not talking about ESPN and the other sports-only channels — I mean when the major networks started spinning off their own sports channels. FOX is the one everyone will remember, with Fox Sports 1 and later Fox Sports 2. Pay TV providers immediately put those in a separate, more expensive tier. Other networks followed suit, and that’s when people really started walking away from pay TV, putting up antennas, and paying only for what they actually wanted to watch.
That sports tiering turned out to be the opening move for what’s happened across all of programming since.
Here in 2026, nearly every programming provider has its own app — and nearly all of them charge you monthly or yearly to use it. Here’s my own experience: I’m not saving a dime anymore. I’m paying about $20 more per month than I did with cable, and getting less programming for it, spread across several different apps just to watch what I want to watch. If that sounds familiar, you’re not alone.
To be fair, the traditional pay TV providers probably still charge as much or more outright. And I’ve noticed ads on TV and radio for internet providers now copying the cheaper streaming pricing models to win customers back — bundling in their own programming packages along the way. Watch what you give up if you go back to one of those.
I wrote a whole chapter on this in my 2019 book, titled “Do You Understand What You Will Lose.” It pairs well with another chapter, “Don’t Be Fooled By The Advertising.” My opinion hasn’t changed: this is a vicious circle that always leads back to the same place. Programming has been split apart and reassembled into smaller, separately-priced pieces — not to give you more value, but to grow somebody else’s bottom line. Now, providers are pulling their original programming back from other platforms to make their own apps more desirable, which only feeds the cycle.
There’s no doubt streaming is the wave of the future and isn’t going away. The biggest problem down the road is likely going to be bandwidth. And with newer tech like ATSC 3.0 rolling out over the next months and years, the antenna landscape could change too. We just don’t know yet whether local broadcasters will eventually charge for what’s currently delivered free over antenna in some DMAs. Right now, they say they won’t — but then again, streaming was supposed to be less costly too.
That cycle — too many services, rising costs — is exactly what I’ll dig into next, in an article titled “Streaming Fatigue: Too Many Services, Rising Costs,” coming soon to the Norman TV View.
Hey, this is Russ, and that’s the Norman TV View… See ya next time…
All views expressed are strictly the opinion of the writer
Technology is going To change, And continue to change, Whether we want it to or not. We can either Adapt and enjoy it, or Ignore, and fight against it, But it will change With, or without our Approval.
(Rusty Norman)
Hello, again. I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted here in the Norman TV View, but I plan to rectify that in the coming days, weeks, and months ahead.
Way back in 2019, I wrote and published a small book titled “So, You Just Want To Watch Television?” I wrote it because of all the questions my friends and customers asked me about cutting the cord. In it, I gave a little history of my thirty-plus years in the TV business and the knowledge I gained along the way. The questions I got most often centered on whether cutting the cord was worth it, and I tried to cover the pros and cons of doing so and what people might expect if they did. There’s a lot packed into that relatively short book, and I’ll soon be making it available as an audiobook — probably within the next 30 days. (I’ll let you know when it’s ready.)
Why bring this up now? Because my plan for this site going forward is to give you my opinion — and some good information — about the newer technologies shaping how we view our favorite programming, and where I think it’s all headed.
There’s been a lot of change since 2019, and I’m sure many of you have already experienced some of it firsthand. It was inevitable — I said as much in the book, even though I couldn’t cover everything in depth at the time.
One of the bigger conversations happening right now is how many sports teams and venues are moving their broadcasts to streaming, and how that’s affecting sports bars and other businesses that show that programming to larger audiences. I get their concerns — the way they have to handle programming across multiple TVs makes this shift hit them especially hard. But some of what they’re dealing with may end up affecting you too, in your own living room, sooner than you’d think.
That’s the kind of thing I’ll be digging into here — what these shifts actually mean for the average viewer, not just the big venues. So stick around…
Hey, this is Russ, and that’s the Norman TV View… See ya next time…
All views expressed are strictly the opinion of the writer
Lately, I’ve been working on posting more video items related to TVs and reception including satellite and antenna. Admittedly, things are a little slow around the TV biz right now, so… while I’m working on some new Antenna, Satellite and TV things, I thought it might be good time to offer you a little reading material of books I’ve written.
The first is, “Living Life Notes – Insights from traveling the Highway of Life.” It is my first book from several years ago BUT I have two others at AMAZON.com and more in the works. The one related to cutting the cord is titled, “So, You Just Want To Watch Television.” The last at the moment is, “More Living Life Notes – Stories and Ponderings With A Purpose.”
First, I Hope you enjoy this book trailer and maybe you will even check out one or more of my books at AMAZON.com …
Second, Thanks in advance just in case you are interested. You’ll never know what you’re missing unless you at least check them out. I’m hoping you do but, whether you do or not, I’m hoping you’ll keep visiting The Norman TV View website to check out the things I have planned for the near and distant future that I think you’ll like…
If you haven’t checked on my books lately, it’s not about TV stuff but here is a trailer to watch and it will direct you to the place to buy it – Amazon.com
Keep watching here at The NTV View… there’s more to come soon
Just for fun, let’s take a short little trip with our imaginations into a land called, Rescan. How do you get to this land? Well… if you’re a “cord cutter” – someone that receives your local broadcasts via an antenna – let’s just say you wake up one day and turn on your TV and some, or many, of your channels aren’t there for you to watch. Your first thought is they are off the air since you know they have been off often recently. You decide not to do anything because you know they will be back on the air sooner or later so you continue to make the coffee, pour a cup for yourself, grab a donut or cinnamon roll and settle in for a news-less morning and figure you’ll catch up later.
After your quiet breakfast, you get ready and head off to your job, appointments or whatever you have on your schedule, planned or unplanned. Throughout the day, you wonder why those channels are missing or how long the stations will be off air this time but go about your day anyway. Afterall, this isn’t the first time this has happened over the last several weeks or months.
You work all day, expecting to be able to watch TV when you get home. So, you get home and everything is still the same, your favorite channels are still missing. You wonder what is going on so you begin to get suspicious your antenna may be the problem. You take a quick look at your antenna and everything seems to be okay, so you decide it might be a good idea to have your antenna person take a look at it the next day.
In the meantime, you turn to Netflix and decide to make a movie night of it. While you’re bringing up you account the thought hits you to check if the local broadcast stations have messages on their websites about the loss of signals. Sure enough, the information jumps right out at you. The headline states they have changed their frequencies. You stop before moving on further and wonder WHY would they do that and does it mean you need new equipment or even a new TV? Fortunately, you read a little further and find you only need to RESCAN your TV to regain the reception of their programming. A little further in their paragraphs, you find they have general information telling you how to rescan your TVs. You follow their instructions and regain your channels, breathe a sigh of relief and start watching your favorite off air channels again…
And that my friend is how you entered the land of Rescan…
Rescan… This may be a foreign term to some of you, especially if you’re not using an antenna to receive your local broadcast stations. If you don’t use an antenna to receive your local broadcast signals and receive them through a satellite or Cable provider, you won’t need to do anything because it will be done for you. But, IF YOU USE AN ANTENNA, get ready to rescan your TV or Off-Air converter because it is happening soon. Why is this happening? Is this similar to when the FCC mandated the change of broadcast signals changing to Digital?
The reason for this is because of the FCC mandated repack, or realignment, of some frequencies to make room to accommodate 5G signals and other devices in the near and distant future. They have already sold the frequencies and are in the process of implementing the transition.
This is not new news. It has been under way for several years now. It just hasn’t been put into action until last year. It is proceeding according to the FCC plan and taking place in phases. At the present we are in phase three and soon to enter phase four. Your local broadcasters are following the FCC mandated repack phases and the timeframe applies to some differently than others.
I want you to be informed but I won’t go into a long discussion here simply because there is plenty of information available online. I will give you a couple of websites to check out, though and you should gain a better understanding even if you are already familiar with what’s going on. A few of those websites are:
There are plenty more. If you check out one or some of these sites, you will likely discover several more you will want to check out, too.
The important things to remember during the next few months, (at least in the Fort Myers/Naples DMA) is to be patient and don’t panic… YOU JUST NEED TO RESCAN… You may have to do it several times over the coming months but understand, “this too shall pass” and things will get back to normal… eventually…
If you’ve been considering Cutting The Cord, (removing yourself from your present programing provider like, Cable, Satellite or some other provider), then my book is a must to help you make the right decision without regrets. It is full of great information and will give you answers to your unanswered questions and will also give you answers to those things you may not have even considered or knew you should… I do firmly believe you will find this book a good resource in helping you understand what needs to be considered by all that are considering Cutting The Cord and some of these things should be considered BEFORE you Cut the Cord.
Rusty Norman
Hello good friend… My name is Rusty Norman, owner of Norman TV and Video Systems. I’ve recently released my book “So… You Just Want To Watch Television?” and it is available in paper back or Kindle (or both) at Amazon.com. I think you will find it has a lot of great information to help you know if cutting the cord is something that will really work for you. Just follow this link and check it out… Thanks in Advance!! if you do…
