Severance, The Studio, Slow Horses, and an upcoming new season of The Morning Show: Yes, Apple TV+ has been on a bit of a hot streak lately. Now get ready for a price hike to match.  Starting on August 21—so, now—the price of Apple TV+ will rise to $12.99 a month, a steep $3 a month higher than the previous $9.99/month rate. That’s a 30-percent price hike, folks.  Existing Apple TV+ subscribers on the monthly plan will see their rates go up following their next renewal date. The last time Apple raised its Apple TV+ prices was back in October 2023, when the service went from $6.99 a month to $9.99/month, an even steeper 43-percent price hike than the latest increase.  Apple TV+ cost a mere $4.99 a month when it debuted back in launched back in 2019.  In a statement announcing the price increase, Apple focused on Apple TV+’s recent streak of popular shows and movies—”all ad-free,” it added, as Variety reports.  Indeed, Apple TV+ remains the lone holdout among the big streaming services by not offering an ad-supported tier, although there’s long been chatter that Apple was tinkering with the idea.  After a slow start, Apple TV+ has cranked out a steady stream of hits, with one show—Severance—hitting a grand slam in terms of viewership and cultural buzz.  Seth Rogan’s The Studio also drew plenty of eyeballs as well as nearly two dozen Emmy nominations, while the Gary Oldman-starring Slow Horses has been a popular procedural. And Apple TV+ also struck cinematic gold with F1, the Formula 1 movie headlined by Brad Pitt that’s been a genuine box office blockbuster. F1 is expected to make its Apple TV+ debut in the fall.  Still, some dark clouds loon on the horizon for Apple TV+, including rumors that Apple may be about to lose Friday Night Baseball.  Apple and Major League Baseball kicked off a seven-year deal back in 2022 for two exclusive Friday night games on Apple TV+, but Yahoo! Sports is reporting that Apple may end the deal early, with Peacock scooping up the Friday games instead. Apple has yet to confirm the news. Read...

For better or worse, the number of ways to watch NFL and college football games has exploded in 2025. While you once need a bloated pay TV bundle just to stream your local teams, this year brings new standalone options from ESPN and Fox, skinnier channel bundles from pay TV providers, and shorter-term subscription plans from Sling. Slice and dice things the right way, and you’ll save a bunch of money compared to what you might have spent in previous years. But with so many potential paths for football coverage, it’s hard to keep track of what’s even available, let alone what the best option is. Here is my best attempt to point you in the right direction. First, know which channels you need The scenarios below are focused on channels rather than specific teams. If you’re not sure which channels you need to watch your favorite college or NFL teams, I suggest using ESPN’s Where to Watch tool. Enter your team into the search box, and you’ll see a schedule of upcoming games and their corresponding TV channels. Make a list of necessary channels and keep them in mind as we go through the options. If you can use an antenna Figure out which channels you can get over the air, and then buy an antenna that suits your needs What’ll you get: ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC If you’re blessed with good enough reception, an over-the-air antenna is still the best way to access a huge amount of football coverage for free, including all the NFL’s Sunday day games and the biggest college football matchups. You’ll miss some games that air on cable, but that’s where some of the following alternatives come into play. If you only need ESPN Subscribe to ESPN for $30 per month (or $36 per month with the addition of Disney+ and Hulu) What you get: ESPN, ESPN on ABC, ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPNEWS, ESPN Deportes, SEC Network, ACC Network, ESPN+, ESPN3, SECN+, and ACCNX ESPN isn’t a great deal on a purely standalone basis, but it could pair well with an antenna and might cater to college football fans whose teams air exclusively on ABC and ESPN channels. If you only need Fox’s sports channels Subscribe to Fox One for $20 per month What you get: Fox, FS1, FS2, Big Ten Network, Fox News, and Fox Business Much like ESPN’s service, Fox One will have narrow appeal as a standalone option, but it could work for folks whose NFL team airs primarily on Fox. It might also appeal to antenna users who otherwise have no reasonably-priced way to watch FS1, FS2, and the Big Ten Network. If you want ESPN and Fox, but not much else Subscribe to the ESPN and Fox One bundle from October 2 onward What you get: All of ESPN’s channels, and all of Fox’s channels These two services will cover a good-sized chunk of college and NFL games, especially for teams whose day games don’t air primarily on CBS. For the cheapest path to local games, ESPN, and Fox’s cable channels Subscribe to Paramount+ ($8 per month), Peacock ($11 per month), ESPN ($30 per month), and Fox One ($20 per month). Bundle the latter two for $40 per month after October 2 What you’ll get: All of ESPN’s channels, ABC’s sports coverage, all of Fox’s channels, sports and entertainment from NBC and CBS For $69 per month (dropping to $59 per month once the ESPN-Fox One bundle becomes available), you get a wide swath of broadcast and cable football coverage, including all Sunday NFL games and Monday Night Football. If you don’t care about ESPN, but want football on local channels Subscribe to DirecTV MyNews for $40 per month What you get: ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, and a bunch of cable news channels Don’t be misled by the name. DirecTV’s MyNews package is sneakily the cheapest way to stream local channels, including football coverage on the four major broadcast networks. Just note that DirecTV MyNews doesn’t carry all four major networks in every market. To check availability, click the “See 10+ channels” link. If your NFL team airs on Fox and you live in a major city Look into Sling Select, which ranges from $20 to $30 per month depending on local channel availability. What you get: A combination of ABC, NBC, and Fox that varies by city, plus NFL Network and a handful of other channels. Sling Select’s local channel availability is limited, but there are some markets where it makes sense for football coverage. New Yorkers, for instance, can use Sling Select to get every Giants game on Fox, plus Sunday Night Football and any Monday Night Football games that air on ABC. Sling Select costs $20 per month in markets with one or fewer local channels, $25 per month in markets with two local channels, and $30 per month in markets with three. See Sling’s local channel chart too see what’s available in each market. If you’d rather have everything in one app, plus NFL Network Subscribe to DirecTV MySports for $70 per month What you get: ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, all of ESPN’s channels, all of Fox’s sports channels, NFL Network, Golf Channel, MLB Network, NBA TV, NHL Network, TBS, TNT, TruTV, USA, major cable news networks. This option will still be cheaper than standard pay TV packages, and you’ll get more overall sports coverage than the standalone options mentioned earlier. You’ll just have to do without cable’s entertainment channels. As with DirecTV’s MyNews package, local channel availability varies by market. Head to DirecTV’s MySports page, then click the “See 20+ channels” link to see what’s covered in your area. For occasional ESPN coverage only Sign up for a $5 Sling Day Pass, $10 weekend pass, or $15 week pass What you’ll get: ESPN, TNT, and a bunch of other basic cable channels Sling’s newly launched day passes could come in handy if you get local channels with an antenna or via DirecTV MyNews. Instead of paying for an entire month of ESPN’s service just to watch one or two Monday Night Football games, you could buy a day pass for a fraction of the price. If you just want a regular pay TV package Consider YouTube TV ($83 per month), Hulu + Live TV ($83 per month), Fubo (starting at $98 per month), or DirecTV’s signature packages (starting at $90 per month) What you’ll get: A broad mix of local, sports, news, and entertainment channels While they’re not as flexible or inexpensive as the other options I mentioned, a standard live TV streaming service will give you a package of channels that more closely resembles cable. If your favorite team plays at home in a different city from where you live And you absolutely must watch live: Subscribe to NFL Sunday Ticket ($480 per season) And only need to see the big moments or don’t mind catching up on games after they’re over: Subscribe to NFL+ Premium ($15 per month or $100 per year) YouTube has the exclusive rights to out-of-market games via Sunday Ticket, but you might be able to eke by with NFL+ Premium’s partial coverage. If you’re balking at the price, NFL+ Premium gets you NFL Redzone’s whiparound coverage (so you’ll at least see your team’s scoring drives) along with full game replays after they’re over. More to come This is a quickly-evolving situation, with new bundles arriving at a rapid clip ahead of football season. Fubo, for instance, plans to launch its own cheaper sports bundle soon, and we may see more attempts to bundle standalone services together at a discount. Stay tuned for more updates. Sign up for Jared’s Cord Cutter Weekly newsletter to get more in-depth streaming research and analysis every week. Read...

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Have you heard this one before? A scrappy entertainment company launches a small catalog of ad-free streaming movies and TV shows for cheap. It doesn’t seem like a big deal at first, because the content is mostly B-movies and reruns, but it proves popular with consumers and goes on to change television entertainment as we know it. I could be referring to Netflix, which started down that exact path with its “Watch Now” streaming catalog way back in 2007. But I could also be prognosticating about Howdy, the $3-per-month streaming service that Roku launched just last week. The parallels are obvious. Roku is starting with a small catalog, heavy on filler, and claims it’s not trying to compete with incumbents. But it’s also arriving at a time when consumers are increasingly frustrated with the larger streaming services, which are becoming more like the bloated, expensive cable packages they once aimed to displace. Howdy might seem insignificant now, but like Netflix, it could become the start of something bigger. Howdy vs. Netflix Roku People tend to remember Netflix as offering an endless bounty of content in its early years, but in 2007, its catalog was tiny, with just 1,000 titles at the outset. Roku’s Howdy catalog is similarly small, with “thousands of titles,” according to Roku, and less than 10,000 hours of entertainment in total. This isn’t about quality over quantity, either. While Howdy has a handful of standouts, including Mad Max: Fury Road and Apocalpyse Now, it’s also filled with such forgettable TV shows as Nikita and Spartacus: Gods of the Arena. (The catalog has some overlap with The Roku Channel, Roku’s long-running free ad-supported streaming service, but there are unique titles on each.) That’s how it was with Netflix back in the day as well. “[T]he selection is fairly small, at least once you subtract the mind-boggling gigabytes of B movies — more like C or D movies — like Addicted to Murder III: Bloodlust and Witchcraft XI: Sisters in Blood,” David Pogue wrote of Netflix’s streaming launch. Early users created forum threads for recommending quality content—shows like The Office and films like Groundhog Day—from within the cruft. Of course, Netflix’s streaming catalog got better over time. The service struck a deal with Starz in 2008 to get new-release movies onto the service, and it outbid premium networks (including Starz) for Disney’s movie streaming rights in 2012. A series of deals with AMC brought such prestige TV shows as Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead, and Mad Men onto the service, where they became more closely associated with Netflix than the cable network that originally aired them. By 2013, it was launching its own buzzy originals with House of Cards and Orange is the New Black. One could imagine Roku scaling up its own service in similar ways. The subscription business requires big hits to encourage sign-ups (something Roku itself has acknowledged in the past), so the company will surely seek flashier content deals for Howdy in the future. Its original programming arm could play a bigger role as well. Not rocking the boat Roku Here’s another parallel to consider: In its early years, Netflix claimed it was not competing with the incumbent cable business. Speaking to Kara Swisher in 2011, Netflix co-founder and (at the time) CEO Reed Hastings noted that cable subscriptions were up even as Netflix grew. “So it appears that to the consumer, Netflix is complementary,” he said. We all know what happened next: While Netflix kept growing, cable began to stagnate. And pretty soon, most major media companies were preparing their own streaming services to take on Netflix directly. Netflix was always going to compete with the incumbents, but it had to insist otherwise because it needed to keep licensing their content. Now, Roku is taking a page from Netflix’s playbook. In a press release, Roku CEO Anthony Wood said Howdy is “designed to complement, not compete with, premium services.” I doubt he actually believes that, but it’s something he’s obligated to say while Roku builds up the Howdy catalog. The next wave Roku I’m drawing these parallels so we can better understand what else is next for streaming, because all we’ve seen from the incumbents looks a lot like cable. Netflix keeps getting more expensive as it pursues more high-dollar sports programming, and services like Peacock and Paramount+ are following suit. The endgame for major streamers now is to push people toward bundles they might not need, with ad-supported tiers that pack in more commercials than were originally promised. I believe a new phase of cord-cutting is inevitable, in which the folks who initially fled cable will start to reevaluate their relationship with major streaming services as well. Free streaming services such as YouTube, Tubi, and even TikTok will play a role in this shift, but there’s also a room for ad-free services that are cheaper than the likes of Netflix, HBO Max, and Disney+. That’s a gap that Howdy could fill. Just as Netflix was able to build its streaming business off the success of its DVD rental program, Roku can build up Howdy on the success of its streaming players and smart TV platform. Before long it could become what Netflix once was: a successful, affordable streaming service that disrupts everything that came before. Sign up for Jared’s Cord Cutter Weekly newsletter to get more streaming TV insights every Friday. Read...

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