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The reality of the short-term Paramount-YouTube TV deal? They’re bickering over how to divvy up our money
As usual, the conflict is about carriage fees, and how much YouTube TV should pay to carry Paramount's programming.
Let’s call it what it is: A temporary pause on playing sports fans for suckers by two massive corporations bickering over how to divvy up our money.
In case you missed it, Paramount — the parent of CBS — and Google-owned YouTube TV reached a “short-term extension” late Thursday night to keep the former’s channels on the latter’s streaming service.
Paramount’s channels — which would have included CBS (Ch. 4 in Boston), as well as MTV, VH1, Comedy Central, and 17 others – would have gone dark on YouTube TV at 11 p.m. Thursday if not for the last-minute extension.
As usual, the conflict is about carriage fees, and how much YouTube TV should pay to Paramount to carry its programming.
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Such conflicts have become all-too-familiar in recent years — including to particularly frustrating effect in New England in November 2020, when YouTube TV dropped NESN in a similar dispute.
Cable cord-cutting sports fans who have grown increasingly weary of having to subscribe to multiple streaming services to watch their favorite leagues and teams are the ones that pay the price, literally and figuratively.
YouTube TV, despite no longer carrying NESN or MLB Network, recently hiked its monthly rate to $82.99.
The Paramount/YouTube TV dispute threatened to affect sports fans in a significant way — and probably still does, given that neither company would specify the length of the “short-term agreement.”
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CBS is the home to The Masters as well as much of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament (it shares the March Madness rights with Warner Bros. Discovery).
The first round of the tournament — typically one of the most enjoyable days on the sports calendar — begins March 18. The first round of the Masters is set for April 10. So there is time for the sides to reach an agreement that is more than temporary.
But this bears watching for the more than 8 million subscribers to YouTube TV, who are getting tired of paying for more while being provided fewer options.
I know, I’m one of them. When I subscribed in 2017, YouTube TV was $34.99 a month — and had NESN. Now NESN’s stand-alone app is $5 less than that a month.
Our bills change, our options dwindle or splinter, but the story remains the same. They bicker. We pay.
Mazzulla connects on the pitch
Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla loves soccer almost as much as he loves answering reporters’ questions with non sequiturs.
So it will come as little surprise that Mazzulla is an entertaining and illuminating guest on the “Men in Blazers” program, certainly more so than he tends to be in a standard postgame news conference.
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One particularly interesting topic discussed is his friendship with Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola. Mazzulla elaborated on taking inspiration from Guardiola — who spent time around the Celtics during last season’s NBA Finals — not only tactically, but regarding their similar career paths as well.
“So many times, when you coach one sport, you get caught up in just looking at that [sport],’’ said Mazzulla to host Roger Bennett on this past week’s edition. “When you watch [soccer], when you watch a different sport, you can find things that help you stretch your mind into the creativity and imagination as to what you can do within the sports of basketball.
“Football has been that for me. Pep has been that for me. I’m obviously nowhere near the manager that Pep is. But we share a similar beginning, from the standpoint of, he was coaching Barcelona’s B team, I was with Maine’s G League team. And you know, Barcelona, they’re a high-level team, and they have an opportunity to go with a big name, and they go with this guy that’s just sitting in their organization. When I saw that, I kind of started studying his career, and then that happened to me.”
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Mazzulla was hired as the Celtics interim coach in the wake of the Ime Udoka scandal before the start of the 2022-23 season. The interim tag was removed that February.
“The Celtics had an opening, and it’s one of the biggest brands, and they could have easily gone with a bigger name, and they go with this guy sitting on the back bench with no experience,” Mazzulla said.
“And that’s when I really started to dive into Pep, like, ‘OK, what’s the psychology of taking over such a high-level brand? What’s the psychology of building your coaching identity? How do you handle success right away?’ It became, really, a road map to how I wanted to go about building a culture, a team, and taking over greatness.”
The episode will be available Sunday morning on Peacock.
A different look
No, that was not a drone that NBC Sports Boston used to provide those high-above-the-parquet, occasionally disconcerting on-the-move shots during Wednesday’s Celtics-Spurs broadcast. It was called a Wire Cam, which the network was using for a demo for one game. (It had previously tapped into the Rockets’ version of it during a January game in Houston.) The thinking is that it provides a better look at spacing, ball movement, and the movement of the players. NBC Sports Boston doesn’t have another date planned to use the Wire Cam this season, but could bring it back if the opportunity is there, perhaps with a few tweaks.
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