Pirates don’t content, folks. Even if someone else is doing it, it’s better not to get hooked. It’s bad, illegal, and will never be as good as what paid. That’s lesson number 1. Lesson number 2 is coming.
The news that Dan and Eugene Levy would be hosting the 2024 Emmy Award Show was met with some excitement in my house. We are all very excited Schitt’s Creek fans, who were already hooked when we streamed the entire five seasons on Netflix (irony to follow) at least twice. But when it came time to watch the Emmys, which air on ABC in the US on September 15, 2024, we forgot to account for one small problem: We no longer have cable, and live shows are often difficult or impossible to watch.
Don’t live for you
The top streaming networks are constantly making deals to host live events, like football and baseball games. Sometimes the networks have their own streaming platforms where they broadcast these events in their entirety. I watched every Summer Olympics on Peacock and absolutely loved the Gold Zone they built to help you keep track of the best live events that award medals.
Not everything can be found on these streaming platforms, however. ABC Network seems to have more than a few dark spots, and the Emmy Awards, which honor the best of broadcast, cable, and, yes, streamer television, is one of them.
At first, everything seemed fine. Roku TV, which I have for free as part of my TCL Roku TV, was airing Emmys Live from the Red Carpet . We all watched in blissful silence until 8:00 PM ET, when the screen went black and then switched to endless promos for other Roku TV shows. We all stared at each other, then looked back at the TV in shock, silently hoping it would bring us the cold open with Dan and Eugene Levy.
Soon we were all searching online to see who could offer a live feed. fuboTV was listed and that was about it. But I had already used my free trial of fuboTV Live to watch the Oscars. I wasn’t about to spend $98 a month just to watch the Emmys.
After searching Hulu, Netflix, and other streaming options for a feed that wasn’t a Red Carpet rerun, I opened the YouTube app on my Roku TV.
At the very top was an “Emmy’s Live feed.” It looked real.
That wasn’t it.
The crime
I started the stream and saw that it was in fact the Emmys, live. There were hosts, but they were behind a poorly rendered black box that said “EMMYS” at the top and then an explanation: “Sorry, we can’t show you the full stream because Youtube is removing it.” Below that, you were encouraged to click a link in the chat and “send a donation if you want to watch the full show.”
Apparently someone used “XSplit Broadcaster” to grab a feed from their computer and then post it to YouTube. The show was somewhat watchable despite the box disappearing for varying amounts of time, seemingly at random. Once it was gone for 40 minutes, but then it was gone for only five minutes. I saw in the YouTube channel chat that people were begging the “broadcaster” to take the box down. It was as if they didn’t understand that this was illegal, and the guy couldn’t take it down for that long without being discovered.
A quick search on YouTube turned up a number of illegal streamers, all using different apps to provide the live stream. They are probably using their cable TV or another streaming platform.
At one point the feed, which was about 2 minutes behind true live, went into glitch mode and we got a view of the pirate’s entire desktop. Yeah, it was funny.
What I don’t find funny, however, is that I can no longer deny that there is still a form of cable television that is worth paying for: live TV and commercial-free TV.
As more and more streamers introduce ad-supported versions or reduce what was once affordable and ad-free to almost affordable but ad-ridden, it seems more and more worthwhile to pay for these premium packages, which remove the ads and give you live access to your local, broadcast, and cable channels.
It is frustrating though. I left cable because of all the channels I paid for and never watched. It just turns out there are still some I want but miss and might be willing to pay for.
As for the pirated Emmys, they continued until the end, but more and more often with the box in place. I guess you get what you pay for.