The Josh Innes Show - The Fight To Watch Games On TV

Episode Date: May 7, 2025

Ted Cruz is fighting the good for folks to be able to find their favorite teams on TV. Let's be real, this is right wing dude fighting for right wing Boomers. Most humans can find their teams on TV. It's a pain in the ass to use so many streaming services to find games, but we make it happen. That said, I would like a world where blackouts don't exist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So let's take a look at this last podcast last episode last segment we talked about How boomer still runs the world as it relates to the housing market and we are fans of boomer We support boomer We enjoy that boomer who's kind of the underdog in this world and the bullied and the vilified in this world That boomer still gets the opportunity to run something and that is Housing so good for boomer you run this shit now still gets the opportunity to run something and that is housing. So good for Boomer you run this shit. Now there are also other areas where we make fun

of Boomer and we say Boomer like what the fuck are you doing? Like yesterday I went to the movies and I could do a whole podcast on what it's like to sit in the movie theaters in St. Louis and listen to the people in these the theaters. But yesterday we went to see this Nicolas Cage movie called The Surfer which was really strange. I enjoyed Nick Cage in it because Nick Cage was being wacky, Nick Cage and that's fun, but I think deep down this was a movie that was trying to have a message that I just don't get down with which I think was essentially like toxic masculinity and bro culture is bad. Like why

is bro culture bad? How did we decide that like dudes broing out and doing bro shit is bad for the world? Like why is it like anytime there's dudes doing anything it's bad. Like there are other things that are very bad for the world but nobody will point out that they're bad. Like the WNBA is full of a bunch of racist ladies that are jealous that some white girl gets all the attention but the culture of the WNBA is that like the white girls owe something to these black girls that have played in the WNBA longer than they have and it's fucking preposterous and it's stupid and it goes against, it's regressive, it's regressive thinking that we're dealing with here that somehow your merit isn't what should get you things or your fame or whatever it should just be like hey we've been here longer and why are you getting attention white girl like to me that's far more toxic than a bunch of bros sitting around drinking beer and watching the fucking MMA fight but somehow bro culture you know the Dave Portnoy's and the Pat

McAveys, they're what's wrong with the world because some dudes have some things they fucking enjoy and like we are taking masculinity out of shit. That's the problem. We're trying to make everybody just less masculine and it's absurd. That's a problem. Yet somehow the problem is that we're going to make movies that explore the problems with toxic masculinity. Oh, shut up. Anywho, there are things that, you know, we talk about bro culture, we talk about boomers. There are some things about boomers that are

not good, like boomer at the movies yesterday, right? So I'm at the movies and one thing I've learned about boomer at the movie, first of all, this had to have been like a field trip from a home because I've never seen this many people at a movie on a Tuesday at two in the afternoon. That's one. Two, it was all old people. Three, it was weird that it was a Nick Cage like weird psychological thriller that all these old people were in. Four, they never shut the fuck up. It's almost like they're challenged by how loud the movie is to talk louder. Like when you're in a movie and you're just trying to quickly whisper something to somebody, you know,

you do it kind of quick, right? You go like, and you kind of go low, you're like, you know, like, I think that that's the guy from the beginning of the movie that was in the mask I think is like I think that's who the killer is and then you're done. Boomer at the movie in St. Louis is like so then my pacemaker went off and I'm like Jesus Christ like that's what Boomer at the movie is here and they just talk loud and louder and louder and louder. So I started doing a bit where every time the trailer would end I would just talk really loud as if my sentence was ending but with something stupid at the end of it. So as if I was talking really loud through this entire Remy Malek trailer and then you would hear like and then it was hemorrhoids. And they didn't really get it. They're like, that guy's fucking loud. Like, fuck, dude, he is really fucking loud in the movie. We're just trying to see

a film. But anyway, that was just a quick update on the people at the movies. And then like one lady showed up 10 minutes into the movie and couldn't find her seats. Mind you, there's four rows in this theater. It's a little artsy Nick Cage movie. We're not seeing like some some Star Wars movie here. And she's like, I think I'm in 10. Is that 10? And then I'm like, Jesus Christ. Anyway, but Boomer stuff. There's something with Boomer that I think is wrong. Okay, there is an issue that I take with Boomer and we will talk about that as it relates to NFL streaming. And I think that this

is something that involves Ted Cruz. So we will get into that after these words. All right, if you're ready to win some real cash during the basketball playoffs, you got to check out Pick Six from DraftKings. When it comes to basketball payouts, DraftKings Pick Six posterizes the competition including price picks. It's a very simple concept. Hit all your picks and score higher minimum payouts on Pick 6 plus even more cash if you outscore the competition. Pick 6 is available in most states including

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Let's take a look at this to watch live sports at home in 2025 between all the apps and channels and streams games air on that boy. That's a weird. That's a strangely written sentence to watch live sports at home in 2025 between all of the apps and channels and streams games air on thanks to billion dollar rights deal.

I hate the way that sentence is written. Maybe it's accurate, maybe it's not. I don't write for USA Today. I don't like the way it's written. It can feel like being in a NASA control room, they say. Now Congress wants to be involved. On Capitol Hill Tuesday, the Senate Commerce Committee, which is jurisdiction over the telecommunications professional sports leagues used to broadcast games, interviewed representatives from the NBA, MLB, and NHL about sports embrace

of streaming, which creates a segmented market that is pricier for consumers. This is a growing problem, committee chairman, Senator Ted Cruz said after the hearing. Fans are understandably upset that it's really hard to watch your home team, figure out what app or what network, how to watch it. It's fractured right now. It's expensive right now. Notably, the NFL did not attend the hearing despite Cruz's April 17th letter to Commissioner Roger Goodell requesting his or league representatives presence. The NFL did not respond to a prior request from USA Today Sports for comment asking if the league

intended to send a representative. Quote, I wish they had come, Cruz said. I think the issues that were discussed apply to them just like they apply to the leagues that were here. The main lines of questioning during the lightly attended meeting, nine of the 25 committee members showed up in most state for only a brief period, revolved around whether the leagues are not taking advantage of the antitrust legislation afforded to them through the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961. The leagues said that because they can operate as one entity during media rights

negotiations, they can pool resources to create a cheaper and more accessible model for fans. I'm all about rooting for the fans and stuff, but I'm a younger dude. I'm 38. Generally speaking, I do not have an issue finding my team anywhere. Now, I understand with local media rights deals, things are getting weirder and baseball's got their issues and like and I'm in St. Louis. This town is full of 900 year old baseball fans. Okay, they are going to have a very difficult time trying to locate Cardinals games if they were only on streaming services and it were not on cable on fan dual sports or whatever, right? So I respect that. I feel bad for them. But the reality of the world is shit streams. Like does it kind of suck?

Sure. Does it kind of suck that everything is not all in one place? Like everybody's used to hey, here's cable. Here's where my games are. I know that my baseball teams on this channel on my cable. I know that when it's hockey season, this is where they are. I know that my baseball teams on this channel on my cable. I know that when it's hockey season, this is where they are. I know that this is ESPN. I know that

this is Fox Sports. I know that this is ABC. I know that's the SEC Network. I know that this is ESPN News. This is ESPN Plus. This is ESPN 2. This is Pac-12 TV or whatever. I respect that and it does suck. Like some of the worst is when you're dealing with like one game is going to be on cable and then the other one is going to be on Netflix and maybe they're on at the same time and you're kind of going back and forth like those things suck and it would be nice if all of these

were wrapped neatly into one place. Generally speaking many of them are for example, almost all of your college football games are going to be found on ESPN+. There will be examples of certain things that won't like Fox games are not going to be on ESPN+. But for the most part, you're going to be able to spend $5.99 a month or whatever it is for ESPN+. And if your team is playing on those. Now, I'm not sure if there's blackout restrictions on those, which that to me, that's the biggest issue. What we need to do is eliminate blackout restrictions on this shit. So like, don't punish people like if they're cord cutters or whatever and they don't want to get YouTube TV or whatever, but they want to have.

Well, actually, the other hard part is I believe to get ESPN plus to have ESPN at all, I think you have to have a cable provider, I think, or you have to have YouTube TV. I'm not positive. Jelly handles a lot of the cable shit around here, so I don't know, but I think you have to be in a position where you have like Comcast or Xfinity or whatever, the Spectrum, whatever your cable is, Cox, to be able to access games that are on the ESPN+. So like this isn't totally wrong. Like it's not the like I agree that it's kind

of a pain in the ass. My argument would be to somehow eliminate blackout restrictions on everything, right? So if you're in a position where you want to be you want to get NBA League pass, right? But you don't want to get like you don't have cable, but you want NBA League pass because you want to watch your favorite team and you're in that market, right? Let's say you don't want to spend't have cable, but you want NBA League pass because you want to watch your favorite team and you're in that market, right? Let's say you don't want to spend money on cable, but you'd like to watch the Memphis Grizzlies or some

let's say you're in Memphis. Say you're in Indianapolis. You want to watch the Pacers. So you want to watch the Pacers, but you don't want cable. You should be able to buy League pass or get some sort of direct to consumer a la carte option. So if you wanted to download the app for the the the Fandool Sports app, which we have here, you should be able to download the Fandool Sports app and watch your team in your market not blacked out and you should not be forced to buy cable for that same for baseball

and if you want to like if you want to buy MLB extra innings, which might be I don't know 50 bucks a month or however much it is, and you can watch every baseball game, or you can specifically just buy your team's games. But if you're in your market and you do not have cable, you do not want to spend money for Comcast, Xfinity, whatever, you just want to watch the Houston Astros on television, you should have that option. I don't know that you will ever be able to

create a universe where every single streaming sporting event is in one place or everything is in one place. Cable is essentially the way of the past. So what are you going to be able to do? Like you're just going to have to figure shit out. Someone's going to have to tell you like, hey, you're a football fan, get Sunday ticket. Save your money, get Sunday ticket and you can still, you know, if you want to get over the air TV and you don't want to football fan, get Sunday tickets. Save your money, get Sunday ticket, and you can still, if you wanna get over the air TV

and you don't wanna get cable, get your rabbit ears out, get your fucking box out, get your, I mean, look, you can go to the store, you're one of the basic cable box deals, right, and still get 30 something channels, ABC, NBC, whatever, but I'm not a believer that you're ever going to get to a point where you can flip on the fucking TV and then everything is in one solid little app like that. For the most part, things are fine,

right? Like I don't think people of this generation struggle with this as much. They know the sports they want to watch, they know the teams they want to watch, and they know how to get the teams they want to watch. This isn't overly difficult for people that are younger, right? Like I think where it gets lame is where you start getting games on Netflix and Amazon and not everybody wants to have Amazon and Netflix. Now, I do think that sometimes those games in the markets that the games are on end up on a channel, but I think that's where it's kind of bullshit. Say you don't want to waste 20 bucks a month on Netflix because really people hype up Netflix, like everything

on Netflix is great. Everything on Netflix isn't fucking great. There's a lot of dumb shit on Netflix and there's a lot of shit that nobody wants to watch on Netflix. So if you don't want to waste 20 bucks, and by the way, that price keeps going up and you can get it for cheaper if you want to do it with commercials and blah, blah, blah. But if you're in that position and you don't want to get Netflix, it's kind of bullshit that you won't be able to watch the football game. That I agree with. and you don't want to get Netflix, it's kind of bullshit that you won't be able to watch the football game. That I agree with. If you don't want to get Amazon, it's kind of bullshit.

But that's also the perk that Amazon's getting in bed for. They want you to have to buy Amazon. That's how they're going to have to make their money. So on their end, I kind of get it too. Like if you're the, you know, if you're somebody and you're like, well, there's an exclusive Christmas Day game on Amazon. Well, I mean, that's why Amazon got the rights. Amazon didn't get the rights to super serve the people that are

already there. They're trying to get more people to come and buy Amazon Prime or Netflix. And the football is the way to get them there. The wrestling is the way to get the people to Netflix. So it makes sense. Like, so I get it. It's a pain in the ass when you come from an old school world. Look, I'm not like some dinosaur or anything, but life would be a lot easier if you could just flip on your fucking TV and every single game was in one little thing and you didn't have to flip over to

Netflix here or Amazon here or the FanDuel Sports app here or whatever the fuck it is. I get that. But these are people doing business. Like, we talk almost like these sporting events, like aren't entertainment, like it's like the right of people to have these. And it's not. By that logic, then it's the right of people to attend the games and the game should be free to attend because it's the right of the people to see these games. I don't know. I just like, it just It's not something that has really phased me or

impacted my life all that much is what I would tell you about that. I don't find my life being difficult because I have to find the LSU game on the ESPN app or I have to find the Saints game on the NFL app or whatever. It's expensive, but it hasn't negatively impacted my life. Now, it is a pain in the ass. This is the one that sucks. It's a pain in the ass if you're watching games on, if you're streaming the YouTube TV version of NFL Sunday Ticket, which is I think the only place you can get it now. It used to be DirecTV and whatever. But the pain in the ass is when you're doing YouTube and the local games are blacked out. So like say you're in St. Louis and the local game we get might be the Chiefs

on one channel and they a lot of time give us the Bears. So let's say you want to watch the Chiefs game right or you want to flip back and forth between the Bears and like say you're an Eagles fan that lives in St. Louis or a Texans fan and your game is streaming. Then you have to exit the stream and you have to go to the TV and you know hit the input button a couple times to go to your cable and then do that. You can't just watch the book that's it needs to be something that's eliminated somehow blackouts of the biggest

fucking pain in the ass ever like, you know, we like to watch the Grizzlies here and sometimes the game is blacked out on the app and it's stupid. Like, I don't like that. But other than that, like, I don't find myself in a horrible spot trying to find games on television. Anyway, more to come.