Just Like the Rest of You (A Dirge About Cardinals' TV)
07/06/2024 09:00 AM
Another cable company drops Bally and now I understand your suffering.
Sigh.
It was the 4th of July, 2024.
I was home after a few crazy days of travel/waiting to travel that kept me busier and more distracted than I wanted to be.
I just wanted a nice relaxing holiday with the family.
Mid-afternoon rolls around. The Cardinals are playing. Everyone is taking a nap. I reach for my iPad to turn on the game. And receive this familiar message…
"You are not authorized to view this content."
Ok. No problem. I get that error message all the time since Bally's app isn't smart enough to remember my login and password for longer than a few days.
I go to Bally's log in page. User name. Password. Submit. No problem. I'm back in.
I click on the game.
"You are not authorized to view this content."
Sigh. I'm a little annoyed now, but this is just what Bally does. The app can't remember my account login or password for longer than few days. It has equal trouble remembering the cable subscription I use to access Cardinals games. It's just a bad app, but that's the price I pay for not paying any price for Cardinals games. I've accepted the inconvenience relative to cost.
I click on the "Connect Your TV Subscription" button.
The big button, usually on top, with the "Optimum" logo isn't there. It's normally right there on the top. Dead center. Easy access. Presumably because a lot of Cardinals fans use Optimum.
Sigh. That's three sighs so far, if you're counting.
No problem. I'll just search for it. I quickly type Optimum into the search bar.
Nothing comes up.
Sigh number four. Ok, probably just a typo. I am on my iPad. Autocorrect probably changed Optimum to Optimus Prime or something.
I try again, slower. O-p-t-i-m-u-m.
Nothing.
I'm really frustrated now. So, I try saying it aloud while typing it in manually. (As if the app can hear me.) O-p-t-i-m-u-m!
Nada.
Now I'm full-on annoyed.
I've streamed Cardinals games this way for three years. Maybe four. I've lost track. I've always – ALWAYS – had problems staying connected on my various devices. Too frequently I've had to switch devices to make it work. Over the last few years, I've streamed from my computer, our Amazon Fire Stick, my iPad, and my phone. Sometimes it's taken three devices to get the system to work.
That's how terrible the Bally app is.
Now, admittedly, things have been a little better this year. Bally's new app was still terrible but I was mostly getting my primary devices to work. I was only logging in occasionally. Not (seemingly) every time I wanted to watch a game.
Here we go, I think to myself. Back to the old Bally. I'll just try different devices.
I get off my iPad and try my Amazon Stick. Same issue. Phone? Nope. No Optimum.
I don't even bother with my computer. The system is clearly working. It's just not working. It's not a log-in issue. There's nothing to log in to. Like the spoon, there is no Optimum.
That's when I began to suspect the problem was not with the crappy Bally Sports app. There was a more sinister systemic issue going on and it had finally reached me.
Another cable company had dropped Bally. Because of course they did.
One quick Google search later and my suspicions were confirmed. Optimum and Bally were in a dispute. Optimum had dropped Bally – all of the Bally regional networks – from their entire cable system.
Optimum is the 4th largest cable company in the US. It's a Fortune 500 company. They serve customers in (according to Wikipedia) Arizona, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, and West Virginia.
Just going by the states, that's the D-Backs, Cardinals, Dodgers, Giants, Padres, Yankees, Rockies, Cardinals, Braves, Astros, Braves, Cardinals, Yankees, Mets, Braves, Reds, Indians, Rangers, Cardinals, Phillies, Rangers, Astros, and whatever they watch in West Virginia.
Now, not all of those teams are on Bally. Some were progressive (or at least lucky) enough to develop other systems during the big baseball cable contract bubble after the turn of the century.
Some people in those areas can still watch baseball. They're the lucky ones.
But Optimum and Bally's breakup means that many more millions of baseball fans, and likely hundreds of thousands of Cardinals fans, can't watch baseball.
That includes me.
I'm just like the rest of you now.
At this point, it's probably better to ask this way: Who in the Cardinals' local region – i.e. MLB.tv blackout area – can still get the team? Come on, show me those hands, readers! One of you? Two maybe?
Of the thousands who will read this article today, I'm guessing half of you can't watch the Cardinals locally without some sort of IP gymnastics. We're down to just a handful of delivery systems in the Cardinals' regional network. Unless you are one of the lucky ones whose cable company hasn't caught on to the fact that Bally is terrible and literally bankrupt, it's pretty much impossible to watch Cardinals baseball without making some fairly significant changes to your life and finances.
I know the Cardinals would empathize with me. They hate Bally, too. Mo and the Cardinals are clearly ready to move on from Bally and find a new way to let people watch their sport. Whether that way is their own streaming system, a collaboration with other local sports teams, or an MLB-wide streaming solution we don't know. What we do know, because Mo has said so a few times, is that they can't get their product into the hands of viewers and they would like to be able to do so. Obviously.
I would like them to be able to do so. I would give the Cardinals money right now. Quite a bit of money. In equal monthly installments. Taken straight out of my checking account. If they could let me watch their sport on a nightly basis.
Preferably through a system that didn't require me to log in on 2-4 different devices with the same information before one of them decides to work.
If the Cardinals media relations folks are reading this (Hi, guys!), I want you to know how much I want to give your company my money. I know it's not your fault. But you have my total support to dump Bally like your junior high girlfriend and find any other system – Any Other System – to let me watch your terrific, winning product.
Back to my point. I'm just like the rest of you now.
I've felt sorry for many of you who have to watch Cardinals' baseball through the Gameday app. Or track the data on Baseball Savant. You know the old sabermetric joke? I don't watch the games. I just wait for the database to update! Well, that's me. Watching baseball now means watching a static image of the infield from the catcher's view with little dots that tell me if a pitch was a ball, a strike, in play (out), or my personal favorite, in play (runs).
It's so exciting.
I could listen on the radio, I guess, but I don't even know if I have a radio. Like, how do you listen to the radio these days? Don't tell me, I want the joy of discovering it for myself. I need some kind of happiness in my life since I don't have Cardinals baseball, and Googling "How do I listen to Cardinals games on the internet" sounds like a great way to spend a Saturday.
Anyway… in the past, I did feel sorry for those of you who have struggled with this issue for a few years. But just sorry. Not SORRY sorry. It was a selfish, kind of "glad I'm not like you all" sort of sorry. Picture me as some fat British porker in a half-open waistcoat waving a pint your face while I say, with a sympathetic cockney accent, "Oh your poor sots! That's Barney Rubble, it'is!" while I proceed to stuff my face with Cardinals games whenever I choose.
But now I'm the barney. Or maybe the rubble. Sorry, I'm not fluent in cockney. I guess I'll have time to learn. Since I can't watch baseball.
I bet I can watch cricket easier than I can watch the Cardinals.
I know many of you would kill to watch the Cardinals just once or twice a month! I'll admit that there were days – many days – when I could have watched the Cardinals and I didn't. Such a waste!
I now realize how lucky I was. And how much I took for granted the great gift that I had been given. By my parents. Because they were the ones who paid for the cable subscription that I used.
That, my friends, is what we call "privilege."
To switch accents, I was basically Marie Antoinette.
"Qu'ils mangent de la brioche."
Let them eat cake.
(Brioche, technically. I know more French than cockney.)
I didn't understand your pain. Now I do. And Bally and Big Cable have off'ed with my head.
Metaphorically, of course.
Somehow, through it all, I still have to write about Cardinals' baseball. That's going to be challenging without a head. Or access to games on video. But I'm not going to make major changes in my family budget until I know whether this is just a short-term issue with Optimum or if they're in it for the long haul.
There was a time in the not-so-distant past when Bally's draw was so large that these disputes didn't last very long. That worm has turned. I'm not getting my hopes up. I'm sure Optimum is just getting out in front of the inevitable. I don't suspect I'll get to ride my parent's coattails any longer.
The rational and objective part of me sees this as a good thing. The more companies that drop Bally the less financially solvent they'll become and the more likely their demise will be complete. The last thing I want is for Bally to somehow come out of their bankruptcy with their established contracts still in hand, still controlling Cardinals' broadcasting rights for 2025 and beyond. That would be a disaster for the Cardinals. And probably for me. And many of you.
I don't know much about anything when it comes to big business contracts, bankruptcy proceedings, or TV/streaming rights negotiations, but it sure seems like the more companies that drop Bally now the less likely they are going to be to hang on later.
I just want my baseball back. And I don't want to subscribe to cable to do it.
Happy Saturday, Cardinals fans. For some of you anyway.
