Sling TV is making a new play for viewers feeling strung out by rate hikes: a “Sling Select” bundle of 11 channels for $19.99 a month, with the option of paying more for local stations.
Select’s fare consists of three Fox channels—Fox News, FS1, and FX—plus National Geographic, NFL Network, and a grab bag of lower-profile channels: LMN (Lifetime Movie Network), GSN (Game Show Network), Grit, H&I (Heroes & Icons), MeTV, and Vice.
Sling touts that Fox channels will feature “specific 4K content”; Sling spokeswoman Andrea Carlson said in an email that this higher-resolution fare includes NASCAR, college football games, and Fox local stations.
In 27 cities, Sling Select will offer the option of paying extra to watch local ABC, NBC, or Fox stations. One or two channels will cost $5 a month, and all three will cost $10 extra.
In most of these markets, that $5 rate only gets you one channel, with Fox locals most common. Viewers in Dallas and Washington can watch Fox and NBC for their $5, while those in Houston can tune into ABC and Fox; only subscribers in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, and the Bay Area trio of Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose get all three.
(If you’re hankering for your local CBS station but don’t want to pay for a cable-replacement live TV streaming service, you could sign up for Paramount+. Or, if your over-the-air reception allows it, you can buy a digital-TV antenna and watch your local stations for free.)
Sling’s existing menu of Sling Extras add-ons is also available with Select.
This cut-down collection of channels is Sling’s second bid this month to win over or win back cord cutters weary of streaming-video inflation. Last week, it introduced a line of $4.99 day, $9.99 weekend, and $14.99 one-week passes for the service’s core Sling Orange plan.
Orange, which includes 34 channels dominated by sports and lifestyle offerings such as ESPN, Food Network, and AMC, normally costs $45.99 a month. However, you can prepay for five months at $39.80 a month for a total of $199.
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In addition, Sling offers Sling Blue, also $45.99 or $199 for five months prepaid, which provides a set of 46 channels more focused on news. A combined subscription to Orange and Blue runs $60.99, or $54.80 a month for five months if prepaid for $274.
Sling increased the rates for both bundles and the Orange+Blue combo by $5.99 in December.
Sling’s combination bundle, however, still doesn’t include a full set of local stations, one reason it’s considerably cheaper than full-spectrum streaming TV options like Hulu. And even those comprehensive streaming plans don’t get you every pro sports game, thanks to the thicket of exclusive deals the likes of MLB and the NFL have inked with standalone streaming options like Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV+.
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For viewers wary of any bundle with a dollar sign attached, Sling also offers a no-charge, ad-supported selection of streaming channels called Freestream, which it has incrementally expanded since relaunching that freebie in early 2023 as Freestream.
Sling’s corporate parent EchoStar’s latest quarterly earnings, released Aug. 1, suggest that this service has had serious trouble placing any of its prior pitches. A filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission (PDF) cites 1.785 million paid subscribers at the end of the company’s second quarter, a drop of 109,000 from the previous quarter. In the year-ago quarter, Sling reported 1.998 million subscribers.
That filing also spoke to broader financial troubles at EchoStar, which, besides Sling, runs the Dish Network satellite TV service, the Hughesnet satellite-broadband service, and the wireless carrier Boost Mobile. The filing’s list of “Acquisition and Capital Structure Risks” leads off with this warning: “We currently do not have the necessary cash on hand, projected future cash flows or committed financing to fund our obligations over the next twelve months, which raises substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern.”
The market-research firm MoffettNathanson did not read that language optimistically. “The company is still headed to liquidation, whether that’s in or out of bankruptcy,” that firm wrote of EchoStar in an Aug. 1 research note. “The only question is when.”
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