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Saturday, September 01, 2007
Dear alma mater
It makes me angry that I cannot listen to Longhorn football games for free on the internet (via, for example, the normal internet feeds from a dozen different radio stations in your sports network) when those same games are broadcast for free by radio. I'm perfectly willing to listen to advertisers. But I'm not willing to listen to advertisers and pay Yahoo! another $5/month subscription fee for that privilege. (Much less am I going to pay $30/game for pay-per-view.)
No more contributions to U.T. from Beldar while that's the case. You're already taking in $107 million through the athletics department for 2007-2008. Quit nickel and diming your fans, punishing them for preferring 21st Century technology over 20th Century technology.
Posted by Beldar at 06:49 PM in Sports | Permalink
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Comments
(1) DRJ made the following comment | Sep 1, 2007 10:19:42 PM | Permalink
Are you at work? We have issues with work/football conflicts. Here's what we do to watch our colleges, TCU and UT:
1. Get a SlingBox. Better yet, get a SlingBox Pro.
2. Subscribe to DirecTV.
3. Fork over $29.95 to DirecTV for the UT pay-per-view and $90/month for the premium service that includes CSTV, which carries the Mountain West this year.
4. Call DirecTV 3 times in 2 hours when the pay-per-view doesn't come on as scheduled.
5. Sympathize with the DirecTV representative when they get "thousands and thousands of calls that overload their call center" when a glitch causes the UT pay-per-view not to work anywhere for the first quarter.
6. Cheer when both your teams win.
7. Next week, repeat.
(2) Jim Howard made the following comment | Sep 2, 2007 7:22:56 AM | Permalink
I paid the $30 to Dish network for the UT yesterday. It was the first pay-for-view I'd ever ordered.
The quality was disappointing, and I still had to sit through commercials.
And as for the game itself...the less said the better.
(3) Beldar made the following comment | Sep 2, 2007 9:59:48 AM | Permalink
I'm not bothered by the notion that they're making games available on PPV when they're not being shown on an over-the-air or cable network. But I think their price point is too high, at least if I'm going to be watching with less than a room-full of friends.
But in previous years, I've listened to those games in a browser window while doing other stuff on the net. I've got one AM radio, on the other side of the house, in an area of Houston with lots of interference and lousy AM reception. And yet the UT Athletics department conspires with highway bandit Yahoo! to charge me a toll for bandwidth, while simultaneously coercing the radio stations who pay UT for the privilege of broadcasting the games to not share them via their normal internet feeds.
I expect Yahoo!, as a profit-making enterprise, to be greedy to the point of competitive self-destruction (and right now, in this arena, they have no competitor to threaten them with that destruction). But I don't expect being (figuratively) raped by the UT Athletic Department, already the beneficiary of my past tuition dollars, and the past and future beneficiary of my tax dollars.
Hence, no more contributions from me.
(4) Boyd made the following comment | Sep 2, 2007 10:57:20 AM | Permalink
My brother's also a UT grad, and last year he caved and bought season tickets. Heh.
'Course, he lives in San Antonio, which is a tad closer to Austin than Houston.
But he has hisself a ball for all the home games!
(5) Jonathan Sadow made the following comment | Sep 10, 2007 7:35:08 PM | Permalink
You chose to go to a football factory for school. Why are you surprised it's acting like a football factory?
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